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nxrthmizu · 3 years

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the tears i cried for you

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pairing | iwaizumi hajime x oikawa tooru

words | 1.5k

genre | angst, star tears disease!au

author’s note | i’ve thought about this one for a while and finally got to writing it at 12.15am and yes its’ midnight but oh hell apparently i produce better work when everyone else’s asleep so oops

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in a world where unrequited feelings would result in sharp-edged, star-shaped tears, crushes could be deadly. ‘love’ was a fragile topic that people thread around like it was shards of glass— no one was willing to love if it meant putting their sight on the line for it.

reciprocation was considered a miracle, a blessing. if you wanted love— well, you needed to be brave enough to take the risk, and you needed to be strong enough to face the consequences of rejection.

unfortunately, oikawa was neither.

he was neither brave enough to confess, nor strong enough to face the consequences. and yet, he let himself dream.

he let himself hope.

he let himself love.

the relationship between a setter and a spiker is an intricate one, they said. oikawa believed the phrase whole-heartedly. there was no relationship more intricate than the one between him and the ace of seijoh— words were never needed between them, not on the court, not during their arguments, not...

despite the telepathic connection that tooru convinced himself that they had— hajime just never got the hint.

i love you.

courage? oikawa had none of it. not when it came to facing his denied feelings for his best friend. and honestly, who the hell would want to admit it? it wasn’t as if hajime was showing signs of returning his affection— oikawa wasn’t going to be so stupid as to confess, to bungee jump off a cliff without a rope—

even across the cafeteria, oikawa could clearly make out what the girl was saying.

“i... i like you. could— can you be my boyfriend?” words couldn’t express how much oikawa admired her. confessions took courage. confessions took risk-taking. confessions took putting your sight on the line, because rejection meant star-shaped tears.

tooru thought he knew pain. afterall, it seemed that fate had hated him from the moment he was born, so pain had always been the feeling he knew best.

but the pain of defeat, the pain of not-being-good-enough, the pain of never achieving his dreams was nothing compared to the agony that shot through his chest like an arrow when his eyes traced the outline of hajime’s words, along with the slight tint of a smile and the shy red flag of a blush.

“sure.”

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don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t—

a drop of blood dribbled down from his lips, vermillion against the pale hue of his skin. along with the red droplet came a crystalline, star-shaped structure smaller than the nail of tooru’s pinkie.

a tear.

he caught it before it shattered into a million, minuscule pieces across his bedroom floor, cradling the tiny glass-like structure in his hands. a bitter curiosity was set alight in his eyes as he inspected the tear— in all honestly, he would have found it beautiful if it wasn’t for that fact that too many of the tears would end his volleyball career.

before he knew it, three more tears fell. and after that, another five. and ten. then twenty, and countless more. a string of crystalline structures grazed his skin after they pierced his eyes like a thousand ice needles, dropping onto his palm and some shattering on the floor, a cacophony of tiny little xylophones making contact with the ground.

in the midst of pain and bitterness, tooru came to a life-changing realisation. one that made a small part of him bite back angrily, i told you so.

he was heartbroken.

angrily, he shook the sorrow away, blinking back the sting in his eyes. a sting that he was sure he’d feel again, and when he did, the intensity was going get worse and worse until it met the end of his sight.

the clinking of the crystal-like tears was strangely satisfying, tooru thought as he gently placed them, one by one, into a glass jar. when he was finished, he shook the jar gently, relishing in the chime-like tinks of tears darting across the smooth base of the glass.

his eyes, now in lesser pain than before, flicked over to a framed photo he had on his desk— one of him and hajime, both at an age where crushes were silly and laughable things. their arms were over each others’ shoulders, and even though their faces were scratched and bathed in mud, they were both grinning, happy and without a care in the world.

if only he could go back to a time when hajime was just a friend.

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if you asked him to pinpoint the exact time that he started to avoid hajime, tooru wouldn’t be able to give you an answer. it started off subtle— mentioning that he had to rush home to help his mom with some chores, having to head to school earlier to finish some homework he left under his desk— all meaningless, instinctive lies that slipped from his lips without a second thought. if hajime found them suspicious, he didn’t say anything, too preoccupied with walking his new girlfriend to school. well, it was for the better— oikawa didn’t know how he would feel if he had to walk with both hajime and his girlfriend to school.

but eventually, it became more and more obvious that tooru was doing his best to cut his best friend out of his life— as much as he could, anyway. he hadn’t cried since the first time, and he would very much like to keep it that way. the amount of crystalline tears in the jar had not increased, and he preferred it like that.

“hey, what’s wrong?” iwaizumi confronted him, at long last, as they were shedding sweat-soaked shirts in the locker room. unintentionally, the setter flinched away from his touch, hajime’s hand retracting back in surprise, retreating from its’ former position on the setter’s shoulder.

“what do you mean what’s wrong?” oikawa answered with a laugh, anxiety boiling under the facade of a flirtatious attitude. “i’m as fine as a dandy, iwa-chan. what, are you worried about me?”

silence vibrated through the locker room as the other players shared nervous looks— tooru’s avoidance of his ace had been pretty obvious to everyone else, it was just that no one wanted to speak up. the pair typically resolved their problems sooner or later, except that it had been three months.

“yes.” the ace replied, staring into oikawa’s eyes with an expression that the latter couldn’t quite decipher, “i am.”

they left the conversation at that, for which oikawa was relieved. hajime never pushed anymore from then onwards, but there always seemed to be something that he wanted to say but left unsaid. words became abundant, and while that worked for them before, tooru wasn’t heartbroken before.

thoughts used to fill the space in between them— just by glancing at the impatient tapping of oikawa’s fingers, hajime could tell that his best friend was hungry for milk bread— but times changed, and so did oikawa. the setter became unreadable, and with no words to cue him, the ace lost track of his best friend’s thoughts, and somewhere along the line, he lost track of his best friend, too.

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“tooru, there you are!” tooru’s mother chastised with a frown. “where were you? hajime’s been waiting for you upstairs for at least fifteen minutes. i thought the two of you walked back together?”

the brown-haired teen froze in his footsteps, hand still held mid-air, fingers outstretched to slip off his shoes. “he’s... upstairs?” tooru whispered in horror. he could only think of one thing, displayed in all its’ disgraceful glory, sitting on his desk, right next to his laptop—

the jar.

“it’s not what it—!” the door to tooru’s room slammed open, the setter meeting his best friend’s eyes as the latter looked up, jar held in hand like a precious artefact, a fragile, priceless object that had to be treated with utmost care.

“it’s not what it looks like?” hajime’s voice was soft, softer than tooru thought achievable by the normally-loud ace. an essence of betrayal, of hurt, of guilt— of all things— howled from inside his tone, and still hajime kept his composure, waiting, patient for the setter’s reply.

more than before, silence sat in the space between them, the wordless understanding that they used to have a distant memory belonging to the past. neither said a word; neither wanted to. quietly, hajime set the jar back onto the table, where it had been before the ace stepped into the setter’s room uninvited.

“why didn’t you say anything?” hajime asked quietly.

the setter swallowed, willing himself not to cry— at least not in front of hajime, “you looked happy. she looked happy.”

“and so you let yourself suffer?” a raging storm of emotions were coursing through the ace’s eyes, his fury rising on behalf of his best friend. “why the hell would you do that?”

oikawa looked into his best friend’s eyes, a sudden swoll of courage taking him by storm, dragging him down like the undercurrent of a tsunami. “because I love you,” he said softly, still looking into hajime’s eyes to meet quietened winds. “that’s why.”

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haikyuu!! gen taglist: @haru-senji @hikari-writes @whootwhoot @folkloeren @definitely-yours @knmiakira @rirk-ke @cemeiia [Send an ask to be added to by general haikyuu!! taglist]

#haikyuu #haikyuu!!#haikyuu angst #haikyuu!! angst #seijoh #aoba johsai #iwaizumi hajime #oikawa tooru #iwaoi #iwaizumi x oikawa #iwaizumi hajime x oikawa tooru #star tears #star tears au #iwaoi angst #[ris writes]—✧

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prompt-master · 4 years

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Would you be willing to share how you might rewrite Yukizome, Sakakura, and Munakata to make them likable characters (if not ppl Bc there’s a big difference)???

ahhhhhhh this ask got me so stupidly excited that I was like wavin my hands around. I think about how to rewrite their characters OFTEN. very often. I’m gonna go with likeable character over likeable people because I think they work better where they’re actually not that likeable people.

The one I think about the MOST is Munakata. He was SUCH wasted potential and I partially blame the medium for that (a single season anime is too constrained for future, it needed more time and care to be a proper story). But Munakata is actually so close to being a compelling character but they made some MAJOR mistakes with him. This ended up getting really long and more like a 3 page ADHD ramble essay. SO IM VERY SORRY to anyone who cannot read this but TYTYTY if you did because these ideas make me very happy! Oh it’s only about Munakata btw because of how long it got

The thing about Munakata is that he is designed to be a foil to Naegi. In fact a majority of dr3 future FOCUSES on this foil dynamic. It is Naegi’s hope vs Munakata’s hope. The World’s hope vs The FF’s hope. And more importantly it is True Hope vs Corrupted Hope.

This is a fantastic concept...so why didn’t it work in canon? I think that the biggest most glaring issue with Munakata’s hope is his logic. Munakata is meant to be a logical man, although with corrupted morals that lead him astray. Yet in canon his logic is laughably infallible. For example as a major figure in the FF and someone who wants to spread hope....why would he tell Naegi to kill himself? More importantly why does he continue to try and slaughter Naegi? The issue here isn’t from the fact that he wants him dead but from the fact that he is under the IMPRESSION that this entire game is being broadcast to the world.

Think about this for a second. In Munakata’s eyes he is going to kill the Ultimate Hope, an international symbol of a better life, live on TV. He doesn’t just want to kill the Ultimate Hope..he wants to do it BRUTALLY as a MAJOR FIGURE OF THE FF. IMO this should have happened later on as the game furthers the emotional turmoil in Munakata’s head and he eventually snaps and gives in to the desire to kill Naegi despite the fact that this is live. And then there should be CONSEQUENCES for that. I wanted so badly a realization where Munakata realizes that he is hurting the Ultimate Hope in front of what he believes is the entire world.

Another issue with Munakata’s logic is saying things such as...implying that the HPA KG was...just a game. I mean...people DIED. it's not hard to see how wrong that logic is. you can't say “this is the real world now” when what Naegi experienced WAS the real world. I think that this could be fixed through a bit of world building. DR3 Future is rather isolated from its world. We don’t really know much about the world and its dynamics. I think it would make perfect sense if the general public viewed the HPA KG as a tv show, they got numb to the sight and even those untouched by despair had a hard time connecting that these are REAL people suffering. With this previously established Munakata expressing that the KG was not real would make a lot more sense and play into his corrupted idea of hope.

There is also Munakata’s connection to his other friends. Now I’ve talked about this before but the game was clearly designed to BREAK Munakata and Naegi. This way the FF would die, both the FF and World’s hope would be broken, and upon seeing this Mitarai would have no choice but to deploy his own forced hope. So it makes perfect sense that Yukizome’s death would break him (in fact if she hadn’t died in that way, her NG code was designed to be Munakata’s fault). But something about it felt...superficial. Again I think this is the mediums fault but it almost feels as though Munakata just forgets about Yukizome until later. I think they should spend more time establishing his pain and what he has lost and why this pushes him to kill. In his eyes if she can die then nothing else matters. It should be THE breaking point, not the first push. I do like the betrayal he feels towards realizing she had despair but it needed more time to fester.

And his relationship with Sakakura also felt weak. In all honesty it was hard for me to feel as though they were ever friends. Sakakura is written as though he just follows Munakata like a loyal dog and Munakata just orders him around. Establish their relationship more! Why are they such good friends? Why is Sakakura important to him? And more importantly why did Munakata decide to cruelly gut Sakakura knowing he was about to confess? This is because he believed that Sakaura was despair and that his confession was more manipulation, but they didn’t show this well at ALL. Munakata just comes across as a major a-sshole who does not care. I also personally found it distasteful that when changing his heart Munakata only seemed to cry for Yukizome. I understand that was his love interest but Yukizome at the end of the day killed herself. Sakakura however was an unnecessary betrayal he took into his own hands AS HE HIMSELF KILLED HIM. He should have more guilt over that! Not just in that moment where he runs to Sakakura, but ahead of time as well! Maybe even DURING his rampage they could have shown him having moments of guilt but he is so absorbed in the idea that all despairs have to die that he doesn’t even realize he has become despair in the name of hope.

A BIG weakness on Munakata’s part comes with interacting with other characters. He is a man who should know how to take charge, lead, and doesn't know what to do when things are getting too crazy even though he THINKS he does. Munakata is heavily flawed, OBVIOUSLY flawed, but many of the interactions with him are as tho his rampage isnt a big deal. There should be reasons for this! Why do people trust Munakatas guidance so much? I dont know! All ive seen from him is that hes insane! Maybe even pieces where around others hes a lot nicer so you can understand why they follow him, even though hes ready to gut Naegi alive with a flaming katana. His interactions with others feel like the writers just wanted to see the next big evil thing they could think of, but for Munakata’s character this doesn't make sense because he was appointed a high status in the foundation for a reason. Maybe even have people say they disagree with some of his methods but at the end of the day he gets the job done!

There is another major missed opportunity here and it's why Muanakata wants Naegi dead so badly in the first place. The remnants. Hiding terrorists in the apocalypse is a PERFECTLY valid reason to want someone dead and think they're a bad guy! But I think since Naegis initial arrest was already so hostile and violent we get the sense that the FF is simply just...crazy.

And let’s think about what Munakata WANTS from Naegi. He does not just want Naegi dead he wants something worse. He wants Naegi to suffer first. He thinks that Naegi doesnt understand his own personal pain. He thinks that because Naegi protected the remnants he must also not care about the suffering the remnants caused. He wants Naegi to feel despair and then die. This is important to his corrupted hope. He thinks the suffering must be shared in order to understand who must die, but he is creating a cycle of pain. Tie this back to the broadcasting issue. He wants Naegi to break for everyone to see. I think..and this is just a concept..I think it would have been a great idea for Munkata to force Naegi to watch the despair video so that he has no choice but to understand.

AND themes are majorly important to Danganronpa. And I don’t think its a stretch to say that there are parallels between Munakata and Naegi. In fact I would say that there are aspects of the og trio in this new trio. I think it would have been really cool if they showed how our favorite trio could have ended up if they had been corrupted as well. But the parrellels dont stick strongly. I think it would have been cool to show a past where Munakata’s idealism lies more strongly than Naegis. As the student council president there was a time where he himself had to use his words to solve problems. Perhaps he learned that sometimes his words made things worse. Munakata does not have Naegi’s talent of emotional intelligence. He is a man of action over words. So he interprets this as WORDS being the problem rather than understanding he does not have these skills. Especially when the apocalypse breaks out, it becomes all action over words. So he sees Naegi who is all talk as a genuine threat who will let everyone die through his “weak ineffective” idea of hope.

Another parallel could be drawn from the fact that they both have hope based careers. Their job is too keep things hopeful. Maybe Naegi stays safe doing public broadcasted speeches, while Munakata is on the field weeding out despairs. This would cause Munakata to feel as though Naegi is doing no real work yet getting all the credit for being a savior.

Munakata constantly complains that Naegi does not know true pain. But he and we as an audience have followed Naegi through his entire process of trauma. We know he is in the wrong. But what do we as an audience know about Munakata’s suffering? We are shown almost nothing! There are some implications, but for how intense he is implications are not enough. We need to see his suffering. We should see how he has witnessed death. Yukizomes death is not nearly enough for this because he talks as though he has suffered for years. How can we as an audience understand that when we have never seen it? How can we understand Munakata when he is outright denying Naegi’s trauma that we KNOW existed with no proper justification for his reasoning?

I also believe that Munakata should have died. It actually upsets me a bit that he was PLANNED to die but didn't. He should have died protecting Naegi after all that suffering and relentless brutality he offered him. Munakata again is a man of action over word, and protecting Naegi with his last breath is the perfect way to show how in the end he changed. Especially when all he wanted initially was for Naegi to die. I find that much more satisfying than just…...walking off to who knows where.

So lets recap some changes. Munakata needs a proper display of his past traumas and his relationship with Sakakura and Yukizome. Munakata needs a proper display of his work relationships and the respect he has earned. Munakata needs to fall into corruption at a better pace, and have geniune reasons for his illogical attacks on Naegi. Munakata needs to care more for his friends. Munakata needs to deal with the turmoil of wanting to hurt Naegi while he believes the world is watching. Munakata needs to die for Naegi

This has gotten long...and I still have things to say. There is so much to make Munakata a good character. Future had a lot of potential and is amazing for a rewrite concept. As for Sakakura and Yukizome since this has gotten long feel free to ask for another round of this individually when asks are open again! If you read all of this somehow….TYSM

#ask #danganronpa #kyosuke munakata #dr3 #dr3 spoilers #analysis #???#sorry sorry sorry ahhhhh i have so much to say fuuuuihkhuhi

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alixanonymous · 4 years

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How A Demon Commissions An Angel ~ A Daminette FanFic ~ Chapter 5: An Exchange Of Information

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: November 5, 2021 5:30 P.M.

Subject: RE: The Plan

Dear Marinette,

(Am I assuming too much by addressing you by your first name if you’ve already addressed me by mine? If so, that would be a little hypocritical, wouldn’t you agree?)

Just as a general rule, I probably won’t get any references you make to any kind of children’s show (I had to look up Arthur after your first email). Like I mentioned before, I lived with my mother for the first part of my life and the idea of her ever even considering letting me watch cartoons is laughable. I did look up what you were talking about however and it seems like you were describing when shows try to portray a person’s conscience by putting an angel and a devil on either of their shoulders. In that case, I would agree with your assessment: between the two of us, I would definitely not be the angel in this case.

I’m grateful for that fact too as it seems that your kindness has only helped you to be so easily taken advantage of by those closest to you. You asked me for my thoughts on your situation so I trust that you won’t hold anything I say against me (again) on account that the whole point of this is that my opinion will obviously contrast with yours.

Here’s how I see it: Your friend (although I hope you will choose not to call him that any longer) is simply not in a position to offer you friendship and so in any case he cannot be angry at you for not accepting whatever he can give. What are you, a dog? What can he expect, that you will come when he can call but accept being ignored the other half of the time? Surely you have more self respect than that if your first email to me meant anything.

As for feeling guilty, he chose to put his needs above yours, if he blames you for doing the same, then he is a hypocrite. He made his choice and he will have to face the consequences for it; in no way is any of that your fault.

After reading your last email, I must admit that it’s relief to see that you at least have some idea of how this will work because saying that all this is new to me would be a gross understatement. As for the aforementioned incident that started this whole ordeal, let’s just say my family’s lecturing on the subject more than sufficed. If I come across any situations that I could use another opinion on, I will let you know. I confess that writing to you is far more preferable than being chided by any of my idiot brothers.

On the subject of idiot brothers, for the commission, the sweaters would be for Grayson and Drake and the jacket for Todd. I trust your judgement when it comes to the designs and will be ready to give my disapproval should anything on the sketches seem off-putting. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. As for the NDA, I’m afraid you’re right in that I cannot oblige. I trust you understand.

Sincerely,

Damian W.

Postscript: Considering what happened the first time I ended an email

to you with two initials, can you really blame me for not taking any chances, especially when you take into account my “snobbish” self, your word not mine, and the fact that my self-esteem is still suffering from your first email. I mean if you really want something to feel guilty about…

From:[email protected]

To:[email protected]

Date:November 6, 2021 1:30 A.M.

Subject: That’s Not How This Works

Dear Damian,

I’m afraid that simply saying you “trust my judgement when it comes to the designs” is not going to do it. If I tried to design anything based on the information you gave me, all I would have to go on is that you want two sweaters and a jacket. Do you have any idea how many types of sweaters and jackets there are?

On top of that, didn’t your father say these gifts have to be sentimental? If you really want the pieces to be meaningful I’m going to need a lot more information on your brothers. Tell me about them. What kind of relationships do you have with them? How would you describe each of their aesthetics? Imagine what you think would be their ideal sweater or jacket and then describe it to me, the more details, the better okay?

As for what you said about my uh maybe-maybe not a friend, I won’t deny your thoughts were somewhat valid if not a little harsh. I just need some time to think it over. I guess, beyond the guilt, I’m having a little trouble moving on. I mean besides the fact that he’s practically my only friend left in the class, he was also the first boy I ever really liked. Once upon a time, I thought I was in love with him even… It all seems so silly now. I’m just struggling with the fact that so many people in my life aren’t who I thought they were. Anyway, I don’t need your opinion on any of that last stuff, okay? I think the rest is up to me and like I said, I need some time to figure this out.

Thanks for listening, Damian. You do have a way of putting things into perspective. Now please, give me a better understanding of what I need to make your brothers so we can get this show on the road. Love,

Marinette (Which you can call me!)

P.S. I like how you lectured me on how being kind allows people to take advantage of me and then proceeded to try and guilt trip me into ignoring your past misdeeds. Fyi, Mr.Postscript née Blackmailer? It didn’t work!

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: November 6, 2021 5:30 P.M.

Subject: What The Hell Is An Aesthetic?

Dear Marinette,

I understand that I’m not a fashion designer myself but I really can’t see how much answering your questions would help with the design. How will knowing about my relationships with them help you make their clothes? If I tell you I don’t like one in particular, are you going to make theirs out of a scratchy material or something? Are you sure that question wasn’t posed out of curiosity because you gave me more insight on your personal life but I didn’t offer anything on mine? I assure you it’s nothing personal, I simply like my privacy.

As I’m sure you can guess from the subject line, I had a little trouble researching what aesthetics are because nothing seems to make sense. It’s as if a lot of people collectively decided to use a word wrong. I don’t know what you want me to say.

In hindsight, I can admit I didn’t really give you much to go on but in all honesty I think my brothers will probably freak out simply over the fact that they’ll get to have MDC originals. If I were to guess what they’d like, I’d say Drake could really do with something comfortable, Todd’s wardrobe consists mainly of biker jackets and I truly couldn’t see him wearing anything else, and Grayson? He’s the easiest to please but if we’re going for sentimental value I think a Christmas sweater would do, the tackier the better.

Is that enough to work on? Sincerely,

Damian

Postscript: Have you yet to realize that while you let your “friends” walk all over you, you seem to not let me get away with anything? Is it also too much to assume from your email that you’ve since discovered you can do better than your good-for-nothing friend?

From:[email protected]

To:[email protected]

Date:November 7, 2021 12:01 A.M.

Subject: (Sigh)

Dear Damian,

No, that was not nearly enough to work on. All I have to go on at the moment is that Drake wants a comfy sweater, Todd’s fashion sense is limited to leather jackets, and Grayson wants a “tacky” Christmas sweater. I don’t even know where to start with that.

Now because it’s taking us so long just to sort out the basic details, I was going to suggest we exchange phone numbers to make things go a little faster but as it seems that you think I have nothing better to do than wonder about your personal life (I do by the way), I’m worried you’d accuse me of being a stalker. So, let me try to be a little more clear.

Sentimental value comes from using what you know about a person to give them something that would mean more to them personally than say a random stranger on the street. I can’t help you much with the design because I don’t have a relationship with your brothers. I don’t know them and I have no clue what they like or want. Still with me?

The reason I asked about relationships to them is because the more personal you make the gifts, the more thoughtful they’ll be considered and, here’s what your stake in this is, the more likely you are to not be sent away. I was looking for details like inside jokes, common interests between your siblings, maybe things you bonded over in the beginning. A lot of my inspiration and artistry comes from little small details expressed in the design through methods like stitching or embroidery.

I can now see that it might be hard for some people to know what might provoke inspiration. So I’ll start with some small specifics: What colors are their favorites? Hoods or no hoods? Zipper or buttons? Pockets? Like I mentioned before, it would be a really big help if we could set up a time and just hash this out through text messages. It’s important that we’re on the same page here. If you don’t like the first few rounds of designs, well then we’d really be cutting it close for time. I’d normally be doing this kind of a commission in person or at least over the phone or skype.

That being said, if it’s truly something you’re not comfortable with, we can totally find a way to make this work. Okay, Damian? Love,

Marinette

P.S. I’m beginning to see that there’s a difference between writing to you and dealing with my classmates. I don’t know if it’s because we’re not face to face or the fact that you’re still practically a stranger. Something about our emails makes me feel, I don’t know, self assured again, maybe your arrogant manner just trumps any restraint I’d otherwise have. And as for if I’ve learned I can do better (Now who’s more invested in the other’s social life?), you might be interested to know I’ve stopped replying to my no-longer-a-friend’s texts.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Date: November 7, 2021 6:30 A.M.

Subject: Let’s Get This Over With

Dear Marinette,

I see I may have overlooked a little when it comes to the designing process. I didn’t mean to insult you by saying your questions weren’t valid. In my defense, I may have been a bit frustrated after failing to learn what an aesthetic is (you still haven’t explained that by the way). I also think I’m beginning to understand what you mean about sentimental value and of course I want to maximize my chances of staying.

So, here’s my phone number: X-XXX-XXX-XXXX. I will make myself available today from 2:00-5:00 p.m. Gotham Standard Time which is 8:00-11:00 p.m. Paris time I believe. Does that work for you?

As for your smaller questions: Grayson’s favorite color is dark/ navy blue, Drake and Todd both like red and black. On the subject of hoods, possibly one for Drake’s sweater, perhaps the kind that has those ties that can be pulled to close it, and for Todd’s jacket, definitely. If a zipper or button is needed then zippers would be preferable. As for pockets, perhaps we could go over them later. I suppose it would depend on the design.

I trust this email was a little more helpful than the last few and look forward to your further contact, if the timing’s to your liking. Sincerely,

Damian

Postscript: I can’t say I entirely understand what you mean but our emails are definitely new territory for me as well. I couldn’t imagine talking to my classmates the way I write to you. While I am satisfied to see you made the right choice (with my suggestion mind you) about what to do about your no-longer-worth-a-thought peer, I find it quite misrepresentative for you to say I’m invested in your social life when this whole deal of ours was your idea in the first place.

Needed to go over this while writing chapter nine and figured while I had the document up I might as well repost it here. To any of my AO3 readers, guess what? Chapter nine is practically finished! I still have a few more details to work out but it should be up either today or tomorrow! I’m both nervous and excited to finally have it posted! Anyway, see you soon!

Master List

#MariBat #Daminette #Marinette Dupain-Cheng #Damian Wayne #FanFic

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consummate-deviant · 5 years

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I reckon I’m gonna talk about Hordak for a minute

So, I feel the need to talk about Hordak. This is, perhaps, not unusual. Once upon a time ago, writing stupidly long pseudo-essays about characters I rather liked used to be my thing… and it’s still a bug that bites me from time to time. The timing certainly seems right! Homeboy has been the topic of conversation lately, thanks to the recent release of She-ra season 4, and the manifold feels associated with it. I’m fond of Hordak, as it were, so I don’t mind sharing my perspective on the subject, since there’s some confusion as to his appeal.

The two stances I see taken on Hordak most often, by those who don’t like him, I should specify, are as follows:

A.) He’s an irredeemable villain who has done terrible things, and I don’t see why anyone would like him.

And

B.) He’s a lame, nonthreatening villain.

I’m not going to be engaging with mindset ‘B’ quite as much as with mindset ‘A’ in the following post, in part because the reasons why he’s so lame and nonthreatening are kinda tied to what I’ll be discussing by implication, but mostly because my response to mindset B can be summed up with the following: “You are not wrong, at all. However, that’s literally the entire point of his character, so while you aren’t wrong to be disappointed if you were hoping he would be a more measured, megalomaniacal sort, it’s also not a failure on the part of the writers, since his lack of suitability for the role he was trying to play was always going to be what his story was about.”

Mindset ‘A’, though... well... that’s a bit tricky. Ultimately “irredeemable” is a personal value judgment. The threshold a character must cross before one audience member feels they no longer deserve forgiveness can vary quite wildly from another, and while trying to pass one’s personal opinion off as an objective fact is something of a pastime on the internet, I am- and I cannot state this emphatically enough- NOT your dad… probably. At least, I hope to god… Look, odds are really good that I’m not your dad, so… you do your thing and shine like the crazy diamond you are. I probably can’t change your mind, and considering I don’t even know you, it’d be kinda creepy if I thought I could! What I can do, though, for those genuinely curious how anyone could consider him redeemable, is share my own perspective on the character, and why I think redemption is the direction the story is going, based on how I’ve read the text thus far… So I’m gonna do that. Let’s go over Hordak as he has appeared in the She-Ra reboot.

Part I: Season 1 Hordak

Now see, when we kick things off, I totally get where both the ‘A’ group and the ‘B’ group are coming from. Hordak, as he appears in season 1, seems ruthless, intimidating, and single-minded. Hordak doesn’t carry the conflict in season 1, serving as more of a background presence while Catra and Shadow Weaver, who have a more personal investment in the central narrative, do all the heavy lifting of antagonizing the heroes and angsting.

This keeps the attention off of Hordak, which is precisely how he likes things. When people aren’t going out of their way to interact with him, then it’s easy for him to control what few interactions he does have. That’s what season 1 shows us: Hordak, when he has perfect control over his own narrative. Every scene that features him is shot with a low angle, often with his form either concealed in shadows or with his face partially out of frame. When he speaks, he’s always calm and distant… but calm in that ‘he could totally fly into a rage at any instant’ way that keeps people on their toes. Pragmatic, taciturn, perfectly measured and groomed,… pretty tall! By any metric a reasonable person can measure a competent, intimidating villain, Hordak circa season 1 seems like he’d pass the test.

Part 2: Season 2-3 Hordak

Here’s the thing... though... about season 1 Hordak... that we learn pretty quickly when we transition into season 2: Season 1 Hordak is a massive fraud. Like, seriously, he’s a fabrication created out of necessity to hide a single, prevailing truth: Hordak is an awkward dork who is kinda terrible at being an evil overlord.

I’ve seen some people describe Hordak’s season 2-3 character development with the expression “You thought I was Ozai, but I was actually Zuko this whole time!” Now, I like this expression fine. I’ve borrowed it a time or two in the past, but with regard to Hordak, I prefer to phrase it like this: “You thought I was Emperor Palpatine, but I was really the Wizard of Oz this whole time!” The former expression gives someone an idea of the tropes of the character pretty well, but the latter does a better job, I feel, of showing the relationship between season 1 and later seasons with Hordak. Hordak is a competent, unflappable, all-seeing leader… hey, hey! Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain! Hordak’s past… as a mindless clone created to lead other mindless clones in a mindless clone army… has left him laughably unprepared for the task of leading others. He’s smart, like, in a general bookish sense, but he has no charisma, no interpersonal talents to speak of, and doesn’t really seem to have any grasp of how to motivate his underlings, save to reward talent with promotion.

Out of necessity, Hordak keeps his true self buried underneath multiple layers of protection. The first layer is the season 1 illusion: Delegate direct command of his soldiers to a single adjutant, interact with that adjutant just enough to keep them in line, and remain in his sanctum all day, like the geeky shut-in he is.

The first layer is pretty nice, and seems to have bought him quite a few years running the horde… but what happens if, say, some uppity Force Captain decides to pester him with personal status reports… or some absent-minded inventor decides to raid his lab for a six-sided hex driver? Personally interacting with his minions for too long will reveal the illusion he’s been hiding behind! Well, fear not... This is where the second layer of protection comes in handy.

Yes, Hordak’s second layer of defense: blustering, shouting, and intimidating. Threaten them with dire consequences for bothering him, let them visit the planet with nearly-enough-atmosphere for a few seconds… do everything in his power to frighten them so badly they never want to directly interact with him again. What should happen if this second layer fails him, though? They learn of the most terrifying secret in Hordak’s entire arsenal.

...There is no third layer…

Nope. If a minion is plucky enough to peak behind the curtain of his grand illusion, and then bold enough to stand their ground at the explosion of hot air that follows… he has basically no follow-up left. One of my favorite nonverbal scenes in the entire series is the moment where he realizes that his screaming is having no visible impact on Entrapta. There’s a look on his face that seems to say ‘What the hell am I supposed to do now!?’… like, it’s clear the dude has never needed a third step to scare someone away before.

Ah, but you, my savvy reader, have no doubt cottoned on to the error in my argument thus far. Establishing that Hordak is an awkward, introverted nerd doesn’t really change the fact that he built the Etherian horde. The fact that he’s not especially competent doesn’t change the bad deeds his committed! Well, rest assured, you beautiful person who can claim no paternal relation to me, I agree! However, characterizing Hordak like this goes hand in hand with the other big reveal of season 3: his backstory.

Now, cards on the table, I’ve been taking Hordak as he comes, and up until this point I didn’t really have any strong idea of whether they were going the big-bad or redeemed-bad route with him. It wasn’t until season 3, when his origin was revealed, that I genuinely began to suspect that the redemption path was where the writers were headed, because it re-frames his actions in a subtle, but pretty important way.

With no Horde Prime, when one looks at Hordak, they see a man who orchestrated a corrupt and oppressive system for his personal benefit, who holds others in disdain due to self-aggrandizement, and is motivated by a desire to be seen as greater than everyone else. That is a character who would be very hard to convincingly redeem. While I’m loathe to raise the specter of Steven Universe discourse here, it’s a lot like the notion of redeeming the Diamonds… and, while I have no strong feelings about that show one way or the other, suffice it to say I can at least see why their redemption is controversial.

Horde Prime shifts the context of Hordak’s actions, though. Now, Hordak is a man who perpetuates the very system he is, himself, a victim of, because it’s the only system he knows. His conflict with others is born from the projection of his own self loathing. Said self-loathing comes from his chief motivation, which is to be acknowledged as worthy by an authority figure who has no interest or desire in ever offering him that acknowledgment.

Such a character is still flawed and villainous, because of course it is. If a character has done nothing wrong, they don’t need redemption in the first place. It’s a lot easier to accept the struggles of a flawed character if they’re a victim of oppression rather than its source. To borrow the SU comparison one final time, the Horde Prime twist reveals to us that Hordak isn’t a diamond, he’s just another one of the countless gems caught in their system.

By the by, does “perpetuates a system they, themselves, are victims of, suffers from conflicts born of projected self loathing, and desire to be acknowledged by an authority figure who has no interest or desire in providing said acknowledgment” sound familiar? I hope so! It ties into my final point of the day.

Part 3: Season 4 Hordak (aka “Hordak and Catra have basically the same arc”)

Now, implying similarity in the character arcs of Hordak and Catra has, historically, been a fraught endeavor. Even I, Hordak stan extraordinaire, felt that we needed to see a bit more of where the writers were wanting to take Hordak before we went and made comparisons. Then season 4 happened… and guys… the subtitle of season 4 may as well have been “Hordak and Catra have basically the same arc.”

Well, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. Catra had people she could perceive as her peers, which granted her a social circle outside of her direct superiors whom she could feel camaraderie with, which added a dimension to the emotional turmoil she felt, but in broad strokes it seems to be a comparison that the writers are inviting us to make. Their alliance in season 4 is based around their commonality. They motivate one another by feeding into the insatiable hunger both of them feel for external validation… in that regard, they bring out the worst in each other, and thus season 4 ends with both of them brought to their lowest point.

At the end of season 4, if the princesses had never arrived, and Double Trouble hadn’t been there to finally force her to confront the emotions she insistently projected onto others, Catra would have assumed the mantle she claimed from Hordak. She would have ruled the horde, devoid of satisfaction or happiness, and any children she took into her numbers she would have treated in exactly the same way Shadow Weaver treated her, and the same way Horde Prime treated Hordak.

To escape that fate, she needed her chance to face the system that oppressed her, and then the chance to face herself… and only once she had done both, could she start to move forward again. That’s why we see the start of her recovery in the final scenes of the season. Catra did unspeakably terrible things- by the end of season 4 her atrocity count easily rivals Hordak’s- and not everything can be blamed exclusively on others, but we, as an audience, have seen enough of what made her the way she is… that’s why most of us are onboard with her eventual redemption.

Catra is, beneath all the layers of spite and illusions of who she thinks she should be, a sweet kid who ultimately wants to reconnect with a friend she fears abandoned her, and to be respected and appreciated by the authority figures in her life. Hordak is, ultimately, a hikikomori dweeb who, not too long ago, was content to spend the rest of eternity with his gamer girlfriend in his lab, pretending to put together a portal machine.

The villain of She-ra is Horde Prime, and the system he put into place to feed his arrogance at the expense of those trapped within it. For those inside that system, like Catra or Hordak, they don’t cross the line and become truly irredeemable until they are given a clear and unambiguous chance to escape from that system and change their life for the better… but refuse to grasp it. Even then… sometimes it takes them a little while to see the hand being offered to them… and sometimes that hand is in the form of a fist.

In conclusion

Look, guys, I’ll be real with you… I made a play at pretending that I wrote this for some point or another… but I kinda didn’t. When I get into a fandom headspace, words get stuck in my head, y’know? When they do, they buzz around like bees until I write ‘em someplace… so here we are.

I’m not so arrogant as to assume I can change anyone’s mind with my 4 AM word vomit about the emaciated bat villain in my favorite children’s cartoon. This is just a thing I wrote! Maybe if you agree with it it makes you happy, and if you disagree with it then it doesn’t get’cha too worked up! I was gonna include Hordak’s relationship with Entrapta into the proceedings… but honestly, that would have doubled the length of this thing, and would have been kinda tangential to the point. I may do a more shippy essay thing later on… but if there’s one thing I learned from the last time I wrote a bunch of these… it’s that planning them out never works well. I guess if people wanna see it I can write it though.

Anyway, I’m rambling, so I’m gonna letcha go! Thanks for listening to my TED talk. Remember, villains are an artform, people are complicated, and hot cocoa is the best winter beverage. I’m going back to fanfic writing until the next bout of insomnia!

#she ra hordak #entrapdak #hordak #she ra 2019

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the-darkness-does-not-bargain · 4 years

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Yeah... it really is not ideal that they did that. I’m sure they didn’t mean to insinuate that victims of abuse should get back with their abusers at the first sign of improvement, because they’ve been really good about saying the opposite up until this point, but that IS the message they’re sending. The fact that very few fans seem to be acknowledging it is worse. I honestly thought we were better than that. This show has sent so many positive messages that are great for kids to hear, but this just isn’t one of them.

Tangent here, but I am deadly serious when I say that people are making the wrong parallels when they compare She-Ra to Revolutionary Girl Utena. She-Ra doesn’t deserve to make Utena references when it ends with the Anthy character (Adora) getting back with the Akio analogue (Catra).

In fact, the only thing people are sort of getting right with these comparisons is that Adora and Anthy, despite their surface-level distinctions, are very similar characters. Let’s take a look:

1. Incredibly powerful: Adora is a capable badass who also claims the mantle of She-Ra, and Anthy is basically a god (or the closest thing to)

2. Conned into believing they are worthless/powerless or their power isn’t really theirs to claim: Adora thinks all her value comes from being a hero and specifically being the weapon that is She-Ra, and she eventually has to learn that she is not a weapon or a tool and that her worth comes from within. She has to learn to find her power to win. Anthy is beaten down and essentially coerced into using her powers as “The Witch” to help Akio and participate in her own imprisonment. Utena doesn’t so much help her to recognize her power, but she makes Anthy remember that she has value and power separate from Akio and her role as Witch.

3. Had a loved one they tried to protect but couldn’t due to circumstances out of their control: Baby Adora could never have prevented Shadow Weaver from abusing Catra. 1) a literal child (who is also being abused) cannot be expected to stop an adult authority figure from doing anything, let alone abuse another child, and 2) literal children are NOT responsible for the actions of another child and certainly not the actions of an adult authority figure. But she gets blamed for not protecting Catra anyway. (Remember all the bullshit hot takes from around season 1 doing this very thing). Anthy tried to save Dios by hiding him (which failed), and she sacrificed herself to the Mob to save him (he died anyway). There was nothing she could have realistically done, even with all her power, to save him from the World. Akio blames her for it anyway and the Swords of Human Hatred back up his accusations.

3. Face a toxic combination of love and hatred from the person they were unable to protect: It’s pretty obvious that Catra’s roiling emotions about Adora are both positive and negative. The pain she felt when Adora defected is genuine. She really felt like she lost the one person that mattered to her (even though that isn’t true and it was her choice to stay with the Horde while Adora begged her to leave, making it Catra who actually left Adora when you stop to think about it). That love turned to resentment and hatred, driving Catra to torture Adora at every opportunity and blame Adora for her various wrongdoings. It’s not easy to discern entirely what Akio is angry about, but it can be reasonably assumed that he is angry with Anthy for “making him Not The Prince anymore” i.e. “Making Him This Way”. Anthy “stole him away from the princesses of the world”, which is the same kind of blame as “You broke the world, and it is all your fault!”

4. Have their struggles dismissed and/or misunderstood by people they call friends: If anyone matches up with Utena Tenjou in SPOP, it’s Glimmer. Glimmer is a girl who wants to be a prince Hero and a leader, but she doesn’t understand what those roles actually entail (see: all of season 4). She reacts when she sees the physical abuse Adora suffers from Shadow Weaver in the Black Garnet Chamber, just like Utena jumps to defend Anthy whenever she sees someone hit her. But Glimmer completely fails to either recognize or acknowledge the subtler aspects of Adora’s abuse, and she later dismisses her suspicion of Shadow Weaver as baseless paranoia, which she then proceeds to laugh about. Utena was naive and failed to notice the obvious signs of Anthy’s abuse by Akio right in front of her, but at least she didn’t do that.

5. Have to find and come into their power on their own: Sure, Adora manages to become She-Ra again to save Catra, but it’s still her decision and willpower that get her there. Utena helps Anthy to see that she can leave her situation and that she deserves a better life, but it’s Anthy who chooses to leave Akio behind and walk out of Ohtori alone.

Now let’s talk about Catra and Akio.

Catra and Akio aren’t 1 to 1 parallels. Catra does not appear to be a rapist and a child molester, for one thing. She doesn’t own a red convertible metaphor for the sins, horrors, and privileges of adulthood. She’s not a failed heroic archetype who languishes in a timeless, flowery coffin, convincing people to have sex with their siblings. Her name isn’t a fancy word for Satan.

But other than that, they’re pretty similar.

1. They share a connection with someone who is much more powerful than they are: Adora and Catra are pretty close in skill when they are in the Horde together, but Adora edges her out just slightly. And when Adora becomes She-Ra, her inherent power blows Catra out of the water. There could never be a fair fight between them because Adora is a woman-shaped WMD and Catra uses dirty tactics to win confrontations. Dios/Akio is at first portrayed as having all the power in Ohtori, but an attentive viewer will realize that’s nonsense and it’s really Anthy who has the power, a fact that becomes crystal clear when she ditches him easily at the end of the story.

2. They simultaneously love and hate that person: I don’t think I really have to explain this one. If you’ve watched both series, you will know exactly what I mean.

3. The relationship they have with this person is both familial and romantic: Look, I’m not going to be That Girl and try to claim that Adora and Catra’s relationship is purely a sisterly one. That is so clearly untrue even without season 5 that it’s laughable. But there are definitely familial elements to it. They were raised by the same woman and they treat each other like siblings do at several points in season 1. But it’s also clear that they have been harboring burgeoning romantic feelings for each other. Anthy and Dios are literally blood siblings who acted like siblings when they were kids, and then that relationship was twisted by Akio into this awful thing where they are “”””””lovers”””””””” (blegh) and siblings at the same time.

Catradora is not like that, before you attempt to tell me off. Like I said, Catra isn’t a rapist, and they aren’t blood-related so it’s not actual incest. But the underlying dynamic is the same.

4. They can’t stand the idea of that person living without them, and seek to imprison and torment them as a result: There are two main things that Catra wants for most of the show, 1) Adora with her or 2) Adora dead. She oscillates between these two desires but never progresses beyond them until her heel-turn in season 5. I’ve written about this before, but she’s the definition of the cliche “If I can’t have her, then no one can”. Akio is the same. On some level, he knows that Anthy is capable of leaving him at any time and he can’t stop her, so he tries to prevent that by abusing and manipulating her into thinking, 1) she can’t escape him and 2) it’s her fault that he’s like this so she should stay out of guilt. Both Catra and Akio also attempt to isolate Adora and Anthy by hurting their support structures (The Princesses and Utena).

5. They seek power and validation with no regard for the consequences: Catra was beaten and diminished for her entire childhood, and Shadow Weaver purposefully praised Adora over her to divide them. Until Adora left and she was subsequently recognized by Hordak, she had never received validation of her worth. So, she craves it and seeks it out by doing worse and worse things to please Hordak and Shadow Weaver. She thinks if she gains enough clout and a high enough rank in the Horde, then no one will be able to hurt her and everyone will recognize her value. She also associates proving herself with beating Adora. This drive for power ruins all of her relationships and leaves her at rock bottom rather than the top of the world. Akio longs for the power he thought he had as Dios (which was really Anthy’s power all along as we see when Utena opens the Rose Gate). He runs the duels and manipulates the duelists so they will achieve what he can’t and open the way for him to reclaim his divinity, leaving destruction in his wake.

The primary difference between them with this point is that evidence suggests that Akio self-sabotages all his attempts to regain power. And while Catra also sabotages herself at multiple points, it’s because she’s reckless and foolish, not because she’s deliberately making things harder for herself. Akio perpetuates a vicious cycle of trying and failing to return to godhood, and Catra perpetuates a cycle of seeking validation from the wrong place/people, inevitably failing to meet impossible standards, and falling right back to where she started.

6. They blame their special person for their own bad decisions: To be clear, Akio is MUCH worse about this than Catra, but they both do it. Again, this is a point I’m not sure I need to discuss much. If you’ve seen Utena’s last story arc and you’ve watched the portal universe episode, then you know exactly what I’m referring to.

I’m not sure how I can make this any more obvious. In the world of She-Ra, Adora is Anthy and Catra is Akio. If you’ve read this and you somehow disagree, stop living in denial. We are better than that.

Again, I’m very happy that Catra was redeemed. I think it should have started in season 4 but that’s beside the point. I’m so, so happy that she recognized her mistakes and joined the Rebellion. But they are really acting like it’s a good and reasonable thing for Adora to let Catra back into her life just because Catra is genuinely trying to improve herself for once. It’s not, or at least not the way they portrayed it. I could believe it if the two of them parted ways and then reunited years down the road, because then it would be easier to believe that Catra’s change for the better was permanent. But that’s not what we got. What we got was just a new problem that’s going to damage this wonderful show in the long run.

#she ra #spop #she ra and the princesses of power #anti catradora

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jalebi-weds-bluetooth · 4 years

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Arnav & Lavanya - An Imbalanced Relationship

This post is influenced and dedicated to @acroakingbird‘s post to me about Arnav & Lavanya.

Let’s answer a few questions first. Warning: this is a LOOONG post!

Did Arnav and Lavanya have a great relationship?

No. I thought carefully about this and as you have highlighted - it was not a healthy relationship. There was a severe power imbalance in the relationship (even if Lavanya was well off and her own person), Arnav was dominant in ways that often influenced Lavanya to do things that inconvenienced her but she was alright with it because she knew it would keep Arnav happy.

In the beginning, of course there is a great chemistry between him and Lavanya. You get a sense that their relationship blossomed from friendship as she’s well aware of his tastes and he gives her soft, small smiles that he doesn’t give anyone else.

And he even finds it easy to shift his growing attraction to Khushi to Lavanya (such as when Lavanya plays with his tie post the red saree incident, he almost holds a similar amount of intensity while staring at Lavanya that clearly says everything, or when Arnav checks out Lavanya in her white saree and is appreciative of what he sees - but is left speechless on seeing Khushi in a saree because he had not expected to feel what he does).

Arnav indulges Lavanya, is protective of her when his family goes crazy to traditionalize her, and is respectful of her privacy. Yet the easy, friendly banter of theirs quickly disappears the more serious their relationship gets. In short, the cracks become visible.

One scene about Lavanya that has always baffled me is how quick Lavanya is to jump into the boat of getting married to ASR when Khushi scares her about the idea that a live-in relationship does not provide permanence. Khushi is so childish and the imagination is laughable.

However Khushi, unintentionally, taps Lavanya’s fear of ASR leaving her. I think Lavanya already thought long about ASR’s stand on marriage with her and it’s not really Nani’s words or Khushi’s ideas that frightens her. She knows ASR and is puzzled that them living in the same house seems to be driving them away instead of bringing them closer.

In her massive argument with ASR (when she’s dressed as a bride), the questions she asks ASR on whether he loves her, her refusal to search for his feelings through his vague actions - all reflect a deeper conflict she’s been facing for months together. Khushi kind of pushes Lavanya to a conclusion she didn’t want to arrive.

Arnav and Lavanya though, don’t have the best relationship. Arnav always get his say, is rude and hurtful to Lavanya. They seem to get close when he wants to. There’s nothing jarringly wrong about their relationship - but the issues are visible long before Khushi even settles into Arnav’s mind. Lavanya is quick to appease him and fears his anger. She apologizes when it’s not necessary and is a ‘yes man’ to him.

Arnav’s best attitude towards Lavanya emerges when he is honest about his feelings for her. The change is immediate. He’s softer, kinder, considerate and immensely protective. I think he thought they would ideal together given she shares a similar school of thought, but unfortunately that didn’t work. In these rare moments we see that Arnav and Lavanya shared a deep friendship which Arnav pursued for convenience and Lavanya for love.

There are an excellent example of two people who should have remained friends.

Arnav craves control over his emotions - especially in a relationship - and the way he exerted it over Lavanya often bordered on troubling. While Arnav and Khushi almost reveled in the constant push and pull of the power play between them, Lavanya was almost always submissive and suffered from his anger.

Honestly, if Lavanya was truly happy and content in her relationship she would not keep on seeking constant reassurance. She feels the need to tell him that she sees love in his vaguest gestures (such as gifting a bag, and you wonder if she’s telling that to herself), and later goes into denial when she realizes he’s getting engaged to her for other reasons.

She does not want to verbalize it till the end but we see Lavanya getting snappier at ASR during their engagement time. We can see it when Lavanya notices that ASR isn’t responding to her thoughts about their honeymoon. When he yells at her for choosing a dress that matches Khushi’s and she yells back. When she’s unsurprised with him taking Khushi’s name.

I think Lavanya also recognizes the issue their relationship has. More than once she mentions to Khushi that she isn’t like Khushi. That she can’t control, talk back nor stand her own in front of ASR. She realizes her self respect is getting hurt in her process of handling his family and being with ASR, but she does get back with him with his slightest effort.

This does not sound like a relationship that could last, and I do like the subtle ways this is highlighted - it makes Arnav and Lavanya’s relationship incredibly real without making anyone an outright villain.

Did Arnav cheat Lavanya?

You answered this pretty well in your post.

I feel like Arnav did cheat on Lavanya quite a number of times, emotionally and Diwali time included. Arnav and Lavanya were committed enough to be in a live in relationship and they both had feelings for another (Lavanya more than Arnav and I’m not saying they had the same intensity as between Arnav and Khushi.) At no point during that time was it okay for him to be attracted and have feelings for Khushi or lead on Lavanya because he didn’t want to deal with them. Frankly, it was disrespectful and cruel.

So as you’ve wonderfully laid out, even an emotional affair is considered cheating. But here comes another question -

Can you control attraction?

No. Unfortunately, no.

Did Arnav & Khushi have an emotional affair?

Yes and no. I don’t think they realized how integral they were to the other emotionally or that how emotionally dependent they were on each other. They never spoke about Lavanya, their emotions or their engagements.

Each time they were upset or that they questioned each other, it was solely based on hints and on their own experience with the other person.

Khushi has no idea how much Arnav needed someone to talk to when he misses his mother. But she stays with him because his sadness hurts her, and he asks her to stay because she is the only one who can connect with the emptiness he feels.

Arnav has no idea how much Khushi needs a pillar of support and a confidante, when her father is paralyzed. How much she needs a shoulder where she can be a frightened child and not a responsible adult. He is unable to hug her when Khushi finally vents her emotions to the only person who can be brutally honest with her. She later runs away, again, confused at why she chose to hug him.

It’s the fact that they always just don’t know. If you carefully see, up until Akash and Payal’s wedding (and then up until their hug at the warehouse when Arnav’s kidnapped), either Khushi, Arnav, or both are confused as to why they are drawn to each other. It’s their awareness but lack of understanding that makes this question difficult to answer.

It’s what makes them better human beings but terrible decision makers.

Should he have been honest with Lavanya?

Yes, but on what basis.

How do I say, he isn’t one to end a perfectly convenient relationship because he is physically attracted and emotionally enamored by a woman who is the exact opposite from him. His feelings, emotions - that he refuses to acknowledge - exist in his hidden thoughts (a lot of time it’s when he’s in his bed). Khushi is almost... a fantasy.

And Arnav is not one to break a secure, safe relationship for a flight of imagination/fantasy. It’s not even a comfortable fantasy. He’s almost always bothered, irritated or confused by it. He only begins smiling while thinking about her during Akash and Payal’s wedding.

Did Arnav realize he was cheating Lavanya?

No, not until the day he takes Khushi’s name instead of Lavanya’s while trying to apologize to Lavanya. I know, it sounds like a stretch to the extent his denial ran - but that’s what denial is.

Arnav is a man of action, not words. His morality is also ambiguous - and he isn’t shy about that. The little he speaks, it’s carefully measured and thought out. He is someone who blatantly ignores the existence of emotions. Arnav knew he was physically attracted to Khushi. But -

- could he start a relationship with Khushi?

No, it took forever for Arnav to realize that he could actually live a life with Khushi. For a long time I think he believed that Khushi was a passing phase. Khushi was almost always fainted or asleep when he pushed away a strand of hair, held her cheek - unveiling his deepest darkest desire.

Yet, as far living together and reality was concerned, he pretty much believed that Lavanya would be ideal. A relationship with Khushi was impractical. He recognizes lust alright, but also does not expect more from it. Unlike Khushi who begins to dream of their married life once she gets a serious hint on what is her feelings for Arnav, Arnav never dreams of a future with Khushi.

He begins to grow emotionally more attached to Khushi once he learns about the death of her parents and realizes that she is an inherently strong, independent and a good human being. There’s no facade to her goodness. It’s when he actively begins to seek her when he realizes they’re more similar. He begins to see her as his equal. Here, I think, it becomes grey. I don’t think he realizes the end result of his growing emotional and physical connection to Khushi.

The Diwali is a shocker to him. He sees it as a moment he succumbed to the fantasies he had had about Khushi and hence, almost turned out to be like his father.

Arnav getting shocked, angry, numb and scared when his family plans his wedding with Lavanya is the beginning of a wake up process where Arnav is forced to understand the consequences of the commitment he promised to Lavanya.

The episodes following the Diwali - he’s technically horrid to Khushi and Lavanya. He’s stringing both of them and he does not realize that until Lavanya literally reminds him. His and Lavanya’s relationship was also a way for Arnav to prove himself to his overbearing grandmother - he couldn’t and wouldn’t break up with Lavanya until he knew, for certain, that he wasn’t in the right place. Which is why he avoided bringing Lavanya over initially, until his ego got involved.

Khushi’s engagement pulls him out of his stupor because he realizes that he could have made it work... perhaps the other man is not who he wants Khushi to be with.

I don’t think he even imagined marrying Khushi until she is engaged to Snakewa. Then he constantly puts himself as a better choice than her fiancé and almost pushes her to acknowledge that he can fulfill all her desires; materialistic, emotional and physical.

Morally, this is incorrect. He, again, does not realize the consequences of his actions. He is seeking reassurance from Khushi to be able to justify and probably end his and Lavanya’s relationship.

There’s a difference between awareness and acknowledgement. The day he acknowledges what he feels for Khushi, is the day he immediately breaks up with Lavanya because he understands the depth of what is between him and Khushi, and almost instantly realizes that he has been stringing Lavanya to get a confession out of Khushi.

It’s the day he stops all his mind games with Khushi. He doesn’t press her further for questions. His only focus is with Lavanya, and he spends the next two days trying to rectify all his mistakes. His breakup with Lavanya is less about his feelings for Khushi and more about his dishonesty.

Arnav never fails to apologize when he realizes he has truly erred.

Also, he can never tell anyone what’s the reason for his breakup because he still has no idea if he and Khushi can actually ever be together. In his eyes he knows Khushi is marrying someone else. And Arnav would very well wallow in his own anguish and not be with another because he knew he wouldn’t be honest.

Arnav has no idea that Khushi reciprocates his feelings completely and refused to get engaged in the beginning because of what she feels for him. He only has a hint but stops pursuing that once he sees how he has hurt Lavanya in that process.

He realizes he has always put Khushi before Lavanya and might continue to do so for the rest of his life.

In short, in episode 142 he realizes he has been dishonest with Lavanya because he comes to a complete realization of his feelings for Khushi. Until then, naively, Arnav & Khushi feel that their engagement to other people would put a full stop to their emotions as they both firmly believe in the institution of marriage. Instead, it does the opposite. Khushi grows increasingly uncomfortable with her fiancé and Arnav grows immensely detached.

Yes, his actions and decisions are more questionable than Khushi’s and it could be called cheating (especially during this phase) but I think it’s more dishonesty because Khushi is never an active participant. It takes two to tango and Arnav really isn’t thinking at this point - if they accidentally kissed or hugged or even confided in each other, he would’ve immediately broken up with Lavanya, which he does in episode 142.

He realizes that the attraction has grown into something permanent and serious, irrespective of the fact that he and Khushi can’t be together. He can’t and won’t give a name to the attraction because he does not want to be like his father. It’s more of Arnav realizing he has been dishonest to Lavanya. It’s the realization that he will put Khushi before anyone else.

Had he continued his pursuit of Khushi and faked happiness and commitment to Lavanya post this realization, it would have been easier for me to judge him more harshly.

Also, the audience, as in us, are the only people who are seeing that Arnav and Khushi think about, care and love each other in equal measure. Arnav and Khushi almost always believe they are impossible apart from a few hints. They are always in the dark about the other person.

Arnav and Khushi realize, openly flirt and admit their feelings to each other, unfortunately, on the day of their forced marriage. It’s the first time they have a smiling Rabba Ve with each other without any confusion/questions - they both know they’re in love (it’s the morning when Arnav notices her cooking for the relatives, sees that she can sense his presence, and she chooses the saree he recommends).

#ipkknd #acroakingbird #Arnav Singh Raizada #khushi kumari gupta #lavanya kashyap #thought

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somepinkthing · 5 years

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thirty four is a rough age when you’re a shitty sect leader

A/N: Basically a collection of post-canon NHS centric fics. My OC's pop up on occasion too! But the story can be read without worrying too much about them. Qinhe Nie is just free real estate given we do not know the name of a single disciple or servant so I needed to create some. This is part 1!

[LIST AND DESCRIPTION OF OC's FOR THOSE INTERESTED]

---

Huaisang found himself at a loss these days. He never really thought that the death of Jin Guangyao would fill the hole in his heart that his brother left, but he at least thought it would make his life a little easier. Foolishly, he’d believed that once his world stopped being constantly tinged red with rage that his life would become clearer. Like maybe life would seem a little clearer to him instead of this hazy fig. As if this one event would make his life less like a pathway crumbling rapidly behind him at a pace that left him scrambling forward. One month and a hundred hours of paperwork later and Huaisang suddenly was hit with a horrible realization.

“Oh shit. I actually have to start being a sect leader on my own now.”

---

“I’m surprised you’re actually willing to talk to me.”

Wei Wuxian smirked, downed another drink, and leaned beck with a sigh.

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t be willing to talk to you, Huaisang-xiong? Have you done something wrong?”

Nie Huaisang smiled that perpetually gentle looking smile of his and matched his drinking companion by downing his own cup like he was drinking water. An absurdly high alcohol tolerance was one of the perks that came with being a Nie and while Huaisang had fallen into the short end of the gene pool in all other areas, he somehow managed to inherit this particular trait.

“Don’t be like this, Wei-xiong. Is there any need for these games anymore?” he asked before pouring himself another drink and gulping it down just as fast as he had the last five.

Wei Wuxian copied the action. “No, probably not. I just figured you wouldn’t want it getting out is all.”

“Whether it gets out or not is out of my hands now, isn’t it? I just have to believe I’ve covered my tracks well enough. That’s all I can do at this point,” Huaisang said in a wry tone.

“That’s true.”

“Besides,” he continued, “As far as convincing you or the others at the temple anymore... well, there’s really very little chance of that, isn’t there? I can learn from the mistakes of my enemies, Wei-xiong. Some things you just have to let go. I’m afraid that no matter what I say, it won’t make any of you think any better or worse of me. That’s the way it is with these things, isn’t it?”

It occurred to Huaisang that perhaps he’d had a bit more than the six cups he’d thought he had and that maybe, just maybe, he was a little too tipsy to be entrusted with his own secrets. Still, nothing he’d said was untrue nor was any of it damning. It was just... what it was at this point.

Wei Wuxian hummed in agreement.

“So how’s the sect leader life?”

Huaisang raised one perfectly curated eyebrow. “Same as it has been for thirteen years?”

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes.

“Now who’s playing games?”

Huaisang really didn’t want to get into this. He’d taken Wei Wuxian up on his invite more out of curiosity that anything else. The last thing he wanted was to admit to the man how much he truly sucked at running a sect.

Because he did. He sucked. Reason number one of many with the plan of “Just Kill Jin Guangyao And Go Back To Normal” was that, well, his normal sucked. Huaisang truly was awful at being a sect leader! He didn’t have the presence or brute force his brother had. He had taken classes in diplomacy but only went as far as had been expected out of the sickly second young master and the son of a courtesan to boot. When he’d first approached his brother’s sworn brothers for help, it had been out of sincerity. He’d had no idea about the truth that early on! He hadn’t been trying to get Jin Guangyao to underestimate him back then! He really was just bad at leading a sect! And, as it turned out, spending over a decade playing at incompetence didn’t make him any more competent at running a whole providence.

Apparently leading a sect involved more than playing deadly mind games, late night detective work, and honing your ability at espionage.

Apparently being perceptive and cunning and secretly good at managerial roles couldn’t totally make up for a lack of experience and leadership ability.

Apparently leaving most of his sect’s important affairs to Gusu Lan and Lanling Jin for the past decade in the attempt to gain their trust actually had consequences.

Apparently secretly plotting the death of your arch nemesis didn’t magically make you a respectable sect leader. Apparently it couldn’t make your presence more commanding, it couldn’t make your weak little arms and stronger, and it couldn’t make suddenly having no support any less daunting. Apparently relying on a man you intended to see dead was a bad long term plan for the continued success of your sect.

Go figure.

But like hell he was going to admit that to Wei Wuxian in the middle of a seedy bar in Caiyi.

“Why am I here, Wei-xiong?” he asked instead. An obvious change of topics but hopefully Wei Wuxuan had learned how to take a hint in the long years since they'd been children.

Wei Wuxian smiled that same blinding smile that had seemed so strong and comforting to Huaisang a lifetime ago.

“To drink, of course!”

Huaisang mildly wondered how Wei Wuxian managed to make inhabiting someone else’s body seem so seamless. Mo Xuanyu had been his own person with a his own lifestyle and his body reflected that.

Mo Xuanyu had been his own person....

And now he wasn’t.

Was that Huaisang’s fault? He certainly hadn’t tied the boy’s hands and forced him to do what he did. He hadn’t created the situation the boy was in. In fact, the information he’d provided Mo Xuanyu had been blatantly upfront about what he could expect to happen. Mo Xuanyu chose his fate knowing what it could cost. He'd wanted revenge with the same fervor Huaisang had. All Huaisang had done was suggest a possible option. That was fine, right?

As if. Huaisang was weak and cowardly and afraid to face his problems upfront, but he was also raised a Nie. He knew better than to try and deflect blame. He had made his choice, there was no point in sugarcoating the facts now. True, Mo Xuanyu had chosen his fate but Huaisang was the one who benefitted. He did not kill him nor had he either forced or coerced the boy's hand but he had knows what would happen when he'd approached the boy. He'd known that the decision would be, had seen the same hatred he saw every morning in the mirror burning in Mo Xuanyu's eyes. It's not as if murder and blackmail were the only crimes a person could commit (they were just the most heinous, right DaGe?).

“Huaisang-xiong~” a lilting voice called out to him, breaking through the shroud of guilt that he feared may have been all too visible for someone as sharp as Wei Wuxian.

“Huaisang-xiong, you’re really spacing out a lot today. Rough month? Can I offer you a drink in these trying times?”

Huaisang couldn’t help but laugh a little. With everything else in between them, he’d almost forgotten how easy it was to like Wei Wuxian.

“Don’t be like this, Wei-xiong. Don’t tease me about my suffering! As if a glass of wine could possibly solve all my problems,” Huaisang lamented dramatically, “Do you have any idea how much paperwork goes into being a sect leader? It’s one thing to see a stack but to fill it out? I haven’t slept in weeks! Weeks!”

“Ah yeah, I know what you mean. Lately Lan Zhan’s taken to sleeping at his desk filling out all that garbage.”

...since Zewu-jun is no longer in any condition to.

It probably wasn’t what Wei Wuxian had meant with that comment but it was certainly what Huaisang heard.

“Well I understand his pain,” Huaisang commiserated, swallowing down his bitter feelings surrounding the first jade with a swig of sweet wine, “Sometimes a desk is better than nothing.”

“But he doesn’t have nothing!” Wei Wuxian whined, taking another huge gulp, “He has a husband! A lonely, lonely husband who’s rotting away waiting for him in the jingshi!”

Upon finishing, he dramatically threw his head down into his arms and groaned at the counter. Instinctively, Huaisang brought his hand up to pat Wei Wuxian on the back.

Suddenly Huaisang had an inkling of why he was here.

“Wei-xiong, were you feeling lonely? So you invited me out?”

It was a notion so preposterously simple that it seemed almost unbelievable. And yet...

“Well, of course!” Wei Wuxian replied, “Why else would I have flagged you down on your visit? Do I seem like someone who just goes out drinking with everyone I see? I’ll tell you what, maybe that’s what I was like in my youth but I’m a married man now! I can’t just do things like wander off with anyone who catches my fancy anymore. I have my husband’s reputation to think of...”

His voice trailed at the end. Wei Wuxian was always the kind to be openly joyful but was as tight lipped as Lan Wangji when it came to his pain. But a childhood of living with his brother and a decade of learning Jin Guangyao’s tells had made Huaisang a little bit of an expert at reading in between the lines. Wei Wuxian was laughably expressive in comparison to that fox if one just learned where to look.

“I can’t imagine trying to marry into the Lan family,. How many rules is it now? 3000?”

“Over 4000,” Wei Wuxian moaned miserably, “Can you believe that? Are there even that many things to restrict?”

If there were, Huaisang couldn’t think of them. Then again, with rules like “no excessive sadness” he supposed it was easy enough to come up with 4000.

“If I’ve heard correctly, one of them is that no one is to speak to you?” Huaisang couldn’t help but to dig deeper, it was practically second nature at this point. And besides, he really just wanted to know how that worked. For all that he knew Lan Qiren to a proud and slightly ridiculous man, he was a bit flabbergasted when he heard of the most recent rule the Lan’s had chiseled onto that mountain.

“Hm, your information is as sharp as always, Huaisang. They barely put that up a week ago. How’d you hear of it so fast? Someone leak it to you?” Wei Wuxian was the kind of person that couldn’t help but dig either it seemed.

“Nothing like that!” Huaisang replied honestly, “I’m simply in correspondence with the disciples we send to the Cloud Recesses. Some of them I’ve known since they were children. They mention night hunting with you quite often so I was curious as to how that worked.”

Wei Wuxian laughed lightly. “It doesn’t really. The kids there are all really good kids and most of them are more used to answering to Zewu-jun or Lan Zhan more than they are to Lan-laoshi at this point. But they’ve been avoiding me a bit out of fear of punishment ever since the rule officially went onto the wall. Lan Zhan assures me that it’ll die down within a week and that he’ll see it removed from the wall soon.”

Wei Wuxian smiled fondly before catching himself and coughing while hiding his blush.

Interesting how admitting to want to bed a man didn’t embarrass him but admitting that he thought fondly of his husband was enough to send Wei Wuxian reaching for the wine.

“I didn’t even know that was possible,” Wei Wuxian continued after downing another glass, “I mean the rules are literally chiseled into the wall. But Lan Zhan said he’d do it so...”

Huaisang also doubted it was possible but he also remembered how easily Bichen had sliced through the thick stone walls of his ancestral tomb. He doubted the mountain face would fare any better against Lan Wangji’s fierce protectiveness.

“Still,” Huaisang said, “even with that new rule in effect, surely you didn’t need to hunt me down in order to have a drink? Wouldn’t someone else have been closer?”

And less dangerous? More trustworthy? A better candidate in general?

Wei Wuxian snorted.

“Huaisang-xiong, you may be overestimating me. Even I cannot afford to single out juniors to take out to drink. And Lan Zhan is great but he’s my husband! Some time apart is supposed to be... beneficial. And-and...”

Wei Wuxian shrugged, no longer interested in finishing his sentence it seemed. But Huaisang heard him loud and clear:

“And other than that, who else could I ask? Who else would be willing to even receive an invite from the Yiling Patriarch?”

Newly cleared as his name was, many cultivators still held onto their hate. Not an entirely unexpected reaction given all the damage and death dealt by one man alone but it would make it hard for Wei Wuxian to find willing friends his own age.

Huaisang wasn’t a fan of bloodshed or the rules of war, but he had been raised a Nie. Contrary to popular belief, he had some understanding of honor and duty (though he was well aware his actions hardly reflected that). That “conference” had been a war council. And even before that, the ambush at Qiongqi Pass had been as good as a declaration itself. You didn't attack a man during peacetime without the intention of starting something. So, for all the blood that was shed, Huaisang himself held no ill will towards Wei Wuxian. If you pick a fight then, win or lose, you better be ready to finish it--that was something his father had drilled into both his sons before passing. Huaisang had always taken that lesson to heart, it was why he didn’t pick any fights!

"Well. If that's all then let's go somewhere with nicer wine. I don't know how much more of this I can choke down. If we plan on drinking the night away let's go find wine that's drinkable."

"You don't seem to be having much of a problem."

"I just have an excellent poker face."

---

Somehow, they both woke up in The Unclean Realms in Huaisang's rooms.

"How did we get here?" Wei Wuxian asked, groggy and holding his throbbing head.

"Maybe we flew?" Huaisang answered thinly, still hiding his head under covers.

"Impossible. I can't fly and you can't carry me."

"Well," a rumbling, amused voice jutted into their conversation, "I can both fly and carry two drunkards. What do I win?"

"Fan HuaLan," Nie Huaisang sighed, "get lost...."

"Now is that any way to speak to your savior?" she asked.

"Is that any way to speak to your sect leader?" Huaisang shot back.

HuaLan barked out a loud, utterly grating laugh. "It is when you're the sect leader."

Huaisang groaned at the volume. HuaLan was a mysterious woman and, by nature, didn't say much... except with him. He took a second to mourn the days where she would salute him like a proper subordinate and didn't speak out of turn.

"You're fired and I'll have you stoned to death for this disrespect," Huaisang muttered into his pillow.

"Try it, trick-ass-bitch."

There was a noise outside.

"Huaisang?" ZiShen called in, voice slightly muted but still loud as hell drifting through the closed door, "Huaisang are you awake?!"

Suddenly the doors burst open and a veritable giant of a man bolted in, jumping right on Huaisang's bed illiciting a pained yelp from his sect leader.

"You should have seen yourself!" ZiShen said with a smile, "I don't think I've seen you that out of it in years! You threw up on JuDuo-daren! It was hilarious!"

Zhang ZiShen. As loud as the day Huaisang met him all those decades ago, when a better man ran the sect.

"Nie Huaisang, shut that guy up..." Wei Wuxian moaned.

"If I could, I would. Just ride it out."

"Hey everyone!" ZiShen called out the still open door.

Huaisang paled. "Zhang ZiShen, don't you dare! Shut your mouth!"

"THE SECT LEADER'S AWAKE!"

Huaisang never regretted The Unclean Realm's long, echoing hallways more than he did now. Not even when his brother used to roar down them about saber training or whatever else it was that Huaisang had recently skipped out on doing .... Huaisang took it as a small victory that the memory of his brother's booming voice brought more fondness than it did pain. He really was hungover.

A crescendo of loud, mostly annoyed voices started heading towards them almost immediately. Huaisang got up reluctantly. No point in going back to bed now. Might as well get on with his day.

"By the way," HuaLan stage whispered to him as soon as he found his footing, "who's your friend?"

"Wei Wuxian. The Yiling Patriarch. Better watch out."

HuaLan raised an eyebrow at Huaisang. A silent question. Huaisang shook his head. He was safe. Even Wei Wuxian wouldn't be bold enough to try anything within the halls of this fortress.

"Huh," HuaLan carried on with a smirk, turning to appraise their guest, "I thought he'd be taller."

Huaisang watched Wei Wuxian's groggy facial features immediately twist into afront.

"Wha-HEY! I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW THIS IS NOT MY ORIGINAL BODY. I WAS AS TALL AS LAN ZHAN!"

"Wei-xiong. Shut up."

---

"I'll tell Xichen-gege that you're doing well."

"I doubt he'd be interested."

Wei Wuxian smiled an actually genuine smile. The kind that Huaisang used to try and coax out of him in those months they'd had together.

"You don't just stop loving people once they hurt you, we'd all have an easier time if that were the case."

Suddenly, a lot of things made sense. The sudden invite. Wei Wuxian's abnormal friendliness. HuaLan knowing precisely where to find him. Wei Wuxian's silent observation during this morning's commotion despite it being just the type of chaos he usually revelled in.

"And you accuse me of being the sneaky one," Huaisang muttered without any malice. As far as sneaks getting into his home, this one he didn't mind so much.

Wei Wuxian only laughed.

"Tell Sect Leader Lan that I am doing fine. The Nie Sect isn't the type to fail just because of one man's incompetence."

"Let alone the fact that no one around here seems incompetent," Wei Wuxian said.

That caught Huaisang off guard. Was that... a genuine compliment? Aimed at him? Or at his disciples? Or a pointed comment? Unsure of how to take it, all he could do was stay silent and try not to gape.

Wei Wuxian didn't comment on the sudden silence. Instead, he looked off to where JuDuo was yelling at HuaLan who was obviously not listening. ZiShen stood off to the side, trying to listen in without drawing either of their ire. The younger disciples nervously flapped around, trying to get them to stop in vain. Huaisang figured they'd stop soon enough once GuanJia finally dragged himself over to the training field and drew all of JuDuo's ire and energy just with his presence.

"This is nice," Wei Wuxian muttered so softly that Huaisang almost didn't catch it.

It occured to Huaisang that perhaps, like any good lie, Wei Wuxian's ruse had held a bit of truth in it. Truly, who else would be willing to recieve an invite from the Yiling Patriarch? Who other than the Headshaker? And perhaps Huaisang felt for him, just a bit. He too knew the crushing feeling of that the empty, lonely hole left behind by those already passed and the sharp sting of having no one else to turn to.

......

......Huaisang shouldn't. This would be bad for his sect and awful for him. Wei Wuxian would report everything to his husband and there were things Huaisang definitely didn't want confirmed. This was a bad idea.

But then again, when was the last time he'd had a good idea? And when was the last time he'd made a decision without the fear of being found out? Was he to live like this until the end of his days? Was this fear and secrecy all that was left for him now that he'd killed his enemy? Was that to be the climax of his life, everything before building up to that moment and everything after consumed with recovering from it? Had Jin GuangYao stolen this from him as well?

"If it's nice," Huaisang said carefully, unsure, "then feel free to stop by more often."

Now it was Wei Wuxian's turn to be caught speechless. That was fine, Huaisang knew how to wait.

"I-I couldn't possibly intrude on the sanctity of your home, Sect Leader Nie," Wei Wuxian finally choked out with his signature it's-all-fine smile. So easy to see through, so transparent.

"Nonsense. If you hadn't noticed yet, there's no sanctity in this home anymore. Nor is there much worry about intruding. My subordinates are all vile beasts," Huaisang said, trying to keep as much affection out of his tone as possible. It wouldn't do for them to think he approved of nosiness, funny as it was.

"But they seem to like you," Huaisang continued, "and I could do with a drinking partner. All of them are lightweights except for ZiShen. And I value myself too much to drink with him."

Huaisang didn't consider himself an overly sentimental man (not anymore anyways) but the way Wei Wuxian's head snapped up, the way his eyes shone hopefully, made Huaisang feel warm. Like maybe he'd made the right choice for once.

#nie huaisang #wei wuxian #wei ying #yiling patriarch #yiling laozu #nhs #wwx #mdzs fic #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #the grandmaster of demonic cultivation #grandmaster of demonic cultivation #founder of diabloism #gdc #my fic #my writing #oc

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wahbegan · 4 years

Text

Yes, call me a testicle-less softie bleeding heart centrist liberal milquetoastsexual, but I fundamentally really don’t like post-apocalyptic shit, because it’s just so unnecessarily fucking bleak. Specifically zombie apocalypse shit, but let’s be honest, the zombies could be replaced with radioactive spiders from Mars and the story would remain exactly the fucking same.

Now, I know this might turn a few heads, because you LOVE depressing shit, regular readers might say! You have a hard-on for Possum and Spec Ops and the ending of The Mist and Silent Hill 2 and SOMA and all sorts of horrible shit!!

Yes, I do, but the key to making your work of art depressing is to make it depressing in an incisive way. When I first read Rick Grimes say “WE are the walking dead!” in the comics at 15, I thought that was some mind-blowing commentary on the human condition type shit. Again, when I was 15. It’s really not. It’s entry level. Which is what zombie apocalypses are, entry level.

Anyone wants to deal with moral complexity or protagonists doing shitty things or antagonists having good intentions, or a never-ending train of horrible shit happening to the protagonist, zombie apocalypse is the easy shortcut to it. But this is what it always ends up boiling down to: HUMANS ARE THE REAL MONSTERS WE WOULD ALL DO HORRIBLE THINGS IN THE RIGHT CIRCUMSTANCES

Yeah, everyone knows that. That’s a fact of life accepted by everyone on some level since the age of, idk, around 19 or so? It’s boring, it’s corny, it’s old hat. Zombie apocalypse shit becomes the emotional equivalent of torture porn, where everything is just so bleak and hopeless and depressing and everyone’s so horrible that the end result is you sympathize with no one and don’t care what happens to the world. The gut punch moments become non-effective because how many people can you brutally kill off before it’s just standard operating procedure?

Possum is a powerful fable about the effects of childhood sexual abuse, about how it warps the world. It presents a character who for most of the film up until the very end, you think might be guilty of the worst crime imaginable, but he’s so tortured and vulnerable and pathetic that you feel conflicted about him. It puts you in his headspace very effectively. It’s a legitimately uncomfortable movie, and the main characters’ suffering is cathartic. It has a point.

The Mist film actually ends, in comparison to the short story, much better for humanity. Outside of this tiny story we’ve been following, it is a happy ending. But the protagonist is brutally punished for giving into despair and doing something monstrous but justified under the circumstances, the kind of shit zombie apocalypse media always espouses. He is immediately and relentlessly punished for it. There was a point.

Spec Ops the Line only descends into exhaustingly horrible and depressing at the very end after beginning as a very safe American Military Hero story. It was making a point. About war, the mental state of soldiers, American foreign policy, about the fact that they make games out of it.

Silent Hill 2, you can see where i’m going with this. James Sunderland didn’t just suffer because the world is horrible and people are horrible and he was suffering for no reason. He suffered because actions have consequences and you can’t cross certain lines without doing permanent damage to yourself, to your mind. SOMA is about the definition of life, of consciousness, about what it means to BE, about the value of life and at what point, exactly, sustaining life is no longer the right thing to do.

There has to be a point. And it can’t just be relentlessly, all the time, nothing but tragedy. Shit like y’know The Walking Dead, The Road, The Last of Us, you just ask...why? What do these people have to offer me, what’s the take-away message? TLOU 2 i think i like better because it at least addresses the consequences of all the horrible shit and has a glimmer of hope and a “revenge cycles never end in blood, they just keep going, they have to end in reconciliation” sort of message, which is fairly basic but it’s something.

Night of the Living Dead is a classic not because Ben gets brutally killed out of nowhere at the end. That’s the wrong message to take away from it. The WHY is the take-away. WHY was he shot? Because he was black. Because armed posses of survivalists going around capping zombies is, in fact, a stupid fucking idea. Because SOME people, as these works of fiction all prove, are chomping at the bit for an apocalypse so they can drop pretense and resort to baser instincts and start knocking off people they don’t get along with and go “fuck you, got mine”. Because the ones bragging about how well they’d survive the zombie apocalypse are the last people in the world to trust. Because the man that shot him didn’t care if he was a zombie or not, he knew he could get away with killing him and didn’t know him as a person, what the fuck does he care?

It’s the why. Why is this happening? What does this say about the world, and what can I do about it? A story whose thesis is that we’re all horrible and doomed and when society collapses we’ll all be different breeds of monster fucking and murdering and cannibalizing has nothing to offer me. I don’t care Like I said, emotional torture porn. It becomes almost laughable the way they just keep maiming and torturing and killing and expecting people to still care.

Kill List did with two blokes in a kitchen, a few minutes, and a hammer what none of the Saw or Hostel movies could do in terms of legitimately upsetting and disgusting me. Because it was grounded in reality, it was happening for a reason, and it wasn’t part of a just constant streaming barrage of gore. The tragedy in your work needs to be like that. Despair for despairs’ sake is the realm of teenagers and fools

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holywaterandcrepes · 4 years

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Good Tidings We Bring 🎁

"You don't understand, angel!" Crowley shouts. They've had this argument, over and over and over and over again, and they're still having it. Crowley keeps his mouth shut most of the time, because it hurts Aziraphale to be reminded that Crowley's a demon and deserves to suffer whether Aziraphale loves him or not, but not today. Today Aziraphale has dared to suggest that Crowley could Un-Fall, and Crowley has finally had enough of letting Aziraphale keep the wool over his eyes. No more agreeing to disagree, Aziraphale has crossed a line and Crowley is finally going to make him see how unforgivable he truly is.

"No, you don't understand!" Aziraphale shouts right back at him, tears in his eyes, "You're not like the other demons, you don't deserve to suffer!"

"She cast me out for a goddamned reason, angel, and that reason is that I'm evil! I keep up appearances for you, but there are things I enjoy that would make your blood run cold!"

"Like what?!" Aziraphale snaps, "Tell me, Crowley, tell me all these horrible secrets you think make you so evil!"

Crowley does. He grabs his angel, shoves him against the wall, and tells him of the way he enjoyed torturing that family to death during the Salem witch trials. He tells him the way he was an interrogator in the Tower of London. How he served in Auschwitz and conducted the most gruesome human experiments, with live subjects. He tells Aziraphale, in graphic, gory, intimate detail, every single one of his sins. He makes it so that Aziraphale could practically have been standing in the room with him when the seven year old boy choked out his last breath, or been the one holding the old man underwater moments before he used his one gasp of air to beg for death.

By the end of it, Aziraphale has fallen to the ground with the sheer horror of it, panting quietly and looking as though he were going to faint. Crowley refuses to give him the mercy, holding the angel upright and making sure Aziraphale hears every word.

"And do you know what the worst part is, angel?" Crowley hisses in Aziraphale's ear. "You think you're immune. You're so goddamned naive, angel, you think I enjoy hurting everyone else on the planet, but not you, never you. You think I could never bear to hurt the one I love, but you're wrong." Crowley caresses Aziraphale's cheek.

"I wish you could see yourself now, angel," he croons, "The way you shudder at my touch when you used to lean in for more, the way the mere mention of the things I've done has you numb from the shock of it...And I did that to you. You want to believe I hate myself for it, but I want to do more. I want to stick my bloodsoaked fingers down your throat and watch you taste the same fingers that tore open a woman's ribcage. I want you to know, down in your very core, exactly what it means to be a demon. I want you to hate yourself for loving a creature so vile, so repulsive, so loathsome as me. That's the kind of creature I am. That's the kind of creature you want to insist deserves to walk this earth free of torment and punishment. You've been wandering around in this pretty delusion where I'm capable of being nice, but it's time to wake up. Say it, angel. I'm unforgivable."

Crowley waits. Aziraphale is staring at him, his eyes wide with shock and his whole face wet with the tears he's been shedding for Crowley's innumerable victims. For a moment, Crowley thinks Aziraphale might actually pass out. Part of him even wants it. Slowly though, ever so slowly, Aziraphale's hand moves. It reaches over to rest on Crowley's, and from the moment skin meets skin Crowley's helpless, lying on the floor and every bit as numb as Aziraphale.

He experiences Aziraphale's memories. They flow into him and he feels every skipped beat of his angel's heart every time they meet over the millenia. He reads every line of his letters to Aziraphale during that dark time, and he feels the angel weep out of pity for his suffering, even when he didn't have the strength to care for anybody else. He watches himself circle around Aziraphale, every time they talked. Aziraphale had realized very early on that the gesture was Crowley's way of watching over him, protecting him, and he feels Aziraphale relax every time. And the love. Oh, the love.

Oh, he feels it, every second of it. He feels the tiny flutter of it from Aziraphale's heart the moment the name "Crawly" had come from his mouth. Sure, it hadn't been a whopping thing like it had with him, smacking him in the face at the sound of Aziraphale's almost petulant "I gave it away!", but it was there. Love, from the moment they'd met. He feels that flutter of love, like a butterfly's wings, and he feels Aziraphale try and try and try and try and try again to stamp it out, pushing it so far down in the recesses of his heart that he hadn't even known it was there. It's laughable almost, the way love pours from Aziraphale's heart at the mere mention of Crowley's name, and yet for almost six thousand years Aziraphale convinced himself that it was the same angelic love he felt for the dung beetle. It's not that the angel's naive, though. Oh no, he's afraid. He's terrified. He convinces himself he doesn't love Crowley because the consequences if Heaven finds out are too horrific to mention.

And then, 1941. Crowley had suspected Aziraphale realized his love in 1941, and now he feels it. The way the millennia of being crushed and forced into darkness have only made the love stronger, so that when it's finally dragged out into the light it hits Aziraphale with all the force of a bullet train. Aziraphale stumbles on the way back to Crowley's car for that lift home, and Crowley sees now that it had nothing to do with the rubble. The real miracle of the night is that Aziraphale had been able to walk at all, with the force of the realization hitting him.

Even then, Aziraphale tries to crush it down, but it's hopeless. Love and pain and longing combine into a feeling that Crowley has been intimately familiar with since the beginning, but it hurts all the more feeling it in Aziraphale's memory.

Then, the Apocalypse. Their trials. Freeing themselves from Heaven and Hell, and finally Aziraphale's caged love is let free, where it latches onto Crowley and refuses to let go. Aziraphale is the biggest snugglebug Crowley has ever met, always wanting more cuddles, more attention, wanting to give Crowley gift after gift after gift after gift, because his love had spent so many millenia being locked up in a cage that it won't be satisfied with existing, it needs to be expressed at every turn.

Through all of that, though, there's one thread of discord, one that started during their time when communication was restricted to writing.

Crowley.

He sees again the words in his letter to Aziraphale, the incessant need to punish himself for his sick desires, the impossible belief that he's unforgivable. He feels Aziraphale's frustration, how he longs to comfort Crowley, to forgive him for each and every one of his sins, if Crowley would just let him.

Oh. Oh. Oh. He's had it all wrong this whole time. He's kept his darker natures hidden away, selfishly choosing to keep Aziraphale at his side. He always thought that he'd kept Aziraphale safely in the dark about his demonic nature, that if Aziraphale ever found out about his demonic nature their love would vanish, because surely Aziraphale couldn't love a demon. Oh, how wrong he was. Aziraphale knew all along, he knew exactly how depraved Crowley was, but he also knew that none of that meant Crowley was undeserving of love or forgiveness. Those desires were part of Crowley's nature. Crowley was right, his nature was inherently sinful, but sins could be forgiven. Aziraphale wasn't staying beside him because Crowley had kept him blind to his unforgivable nature, Aziraphale had spent all this time waiting, with ill-grace and barely-suppressed frustration, for Crowley to just confess his sins, so they could be forgiven.

And then, today. Crowley's done it. He's confessed his sins, and they're awful and they're horrible and yes Aziraphale weeps for the pain those people suffered, but the feeling is utterly dwarfed by relief. Finally, finally, Crowley is letting his sins come to light and Aziraphale has been waiting six thousand years to forgive them. And they are forgiven, Crowley can feel it. Aziraphale takes even his worst sins and sweeps them aside, the forgiveness so immediate and unconditional that Crowley is floored. Aziraphale doesn't hate him for his sins, Aziraphale loves him for being strong enough to admit them. He forgives the sins in less than a heartbeat. Crowley will sin again, they both know it, and Aziraphale will be right there to forgive him again, and again, and again, until the sun itself burns out.

And again, he was wrong. All this time he thought himself a black hole, a presence so dark it swallowed even Aziraphale's angelic light. He fears even now that if he gets too close his demonic black hole will take and take and take of Aziraphale's light until there is no more light left to take, until Aziraphale Falls because Crowley, monster that he is, has sucked all the goodness from his angel.

How utterly stupid of him.

Aziraphale is the black hole in this relationship. He takes, he takes Crowley's sins and he forgives them and sweeps them aside until there are none left. Aziraphale, even now, pulls him into his breast, like a mother to her child, like God, the original Mother, to all her Children, and whispers "Tell me, Crowley. Tell me everything." Crowley does, he tells Aziraphale his every sin since the dawn of time and before, and they all seem to vanish into the ether. How wrong he was. Aziraphale is the black hole, drawing all of Crowley's sins into himself until there is nothing left of Crowley that needs forgiving, until Crowley truly could Un-Fall, because how could he be Fallen when Aziraphale has forgiven his sins?

All of this he sees, in a moment, maybe two, maybe two hours or two millennia for all he knows. Crowley is good, so good, and everytime they meet Aziraphale's heart sighs like the emotional equivalent of sinking into a hot bath after being caught out in a rainstorm. Aziraphale knows Crowley's nature, and it is that exact nature that causes Aziraphale's heart to flutter, and bounce, and skip, and sigh with relief, and be still, at rest, because there cannot possibly be any discontent when Crowley is there to encircle him and surround him and protect him. That is the very nature that Crowley has deemed unforgivable, and there is no possible way that Crowley's nature is unforgivable, because there is no possible way that the feelings Crowley prompts in Aziraphale's heart are wrong to need forgiveness in the first place.

There is so much that Aziraphale wants to tell him, now that he's opened himself up to it. He's been so wrong, in so many different ways, all this time, and Crowley sees now that when Aziraphale had collapsed it was from relief, not horror. Aziraphale had known Crowley's sins would be terrible, but it's such a relief to Aziraphale to finally be able to forgive them. He's wanted to comfort Crowley since the Salem Witch Trials, and now that he's finally been allowed to give that comfort, it's bliss. By describing to his angel all his wretched sins, he's made Aziraphale feel better than he ever had in all the many, many unions they've shared. Finally, he feels Aziraphale think, Finally, finally, finally.

***

When Crowley eventually comes back to himself they're both on the ground, a messy tangle of limbs. Crowley had indeed wormed his way into Aziraphale's breast at some point in time, and yet his knee is up on Aziraphale's stomach and his head is pressed into Aziraphale's chest, and he's clutching tight to the base of Aziraphale's curls, he must be pulling but Aziraphale makes no complaints, and it's awkward and uncomfortable but Crowley simply doesn't care. He's crying, or he has been, tears of love and adoration and relief and all sorts of unnamable emotions that somehow don't burn his skin. Why? Is...is he...has he truly Un-Fallen? No, no, he can feel it, he's still a demon. It's impossible to Un-Fall, but it is possible to be a demon that doesn't deserve punishment. That's what he is. Of course, be finds himself thinking, how stupid I've been. How can he deserve punishment, when he doesn't have any sins left to forgive? He feels light, lighter than air, and he realizes it's because he's no longer carrying around the guilt he'd shouldered since...forever. He feels so light he's dizzy with it, and it's disorienting beyond anything he's ever felt but Aziraphale is there, warm and soft and in love and with his arms around him, ready to ground him and keep him from floating away. Finally he settles back into himself. It's him, and Aziraphale. He's laying in Aziraphale's arms, and it's just like every other time he's laid in Aziraphale's arms before, but this time he's at rest. He's let himself confess his sins, he's let himself be forgiven, he's let himself be loved.

"You are unforgivable," Aziraphale murmurs in his ear, and Crowley shivers from the force of the love he hears in Aziraphale's voice, "You're unforgivable for making me wait so long to forgive you."

@hellsrhapsody It's finally done! I hope you like it ❤

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calunavulgaris · 5 years

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I’d like to think that anyone who knows me knows that I am 100% pro-choice, but in case it needs to be said: I am unapologetically, completely, irrevocably pro-choice.

There are two main reasons for this, the first being that I have known from a very early age that I never wanted to be pregnant or give birth. The idea is beyond horrifying to me. The second is much less personal. I have never encountered an anti-choice argument that wasn’t laughably easy to dismantle. I’ve been vocally pro-choice for roughly 30 years now (thanks, Mom) and in that time one thing has become painfully evident: anti-choicers have nothing but tenuous, easily debunked “arguments” that are based solely on emotional manipulation, anecdotes, and pseudo-science. They’re also dreadfully unoriginal and repetitive. It gets dull, let me tell you.

But what the hell, just for fun let’s go through some of them here:

“Abortion is MURDER!”

Nope. Murder is a legal term with a clear, concise definition. Abortion does not meet the criteria. Go ahead and look that up, it’s pretty easy to find.

“Abortion KILLS BABIES!”

It’s funny how those who claim to be on the side of science (which is ridiculous on its own) resort to unscientific terms when their goal is to evoke a purely emotional response, isn’t it? “Killing babies” packs more of a manipulative punch than “a medical procedure involving the removal of fetal tissue.” Believe it or not, I sympathize if the termination of a fetus squicks you. I get it. Being that I’m pro-choice, I will always defend your right not to ever undergo the procedure with the same fervour I employ when defending the choice to obtain an abortion. That’s what it means to be pro-choice.

“The fetus is innocent and has a right to life!”

By definition, the fetus can’t be innocent or guilty, it is purely neutral. The “right to life” does not grant anyone the right to use any part of another person’s body for their survival, no matter how “innocent” that person may be. The person carrying the fetus also has the right to life and bodily autonomy, and having sex/being pregnant isn’t something one can be “guilty” of, as neither is a crime. If we want to talk about innocence, let’s start there.

“What about the rights/autonomy of the fetus?”

For starters, the fetus has no autonomy. Its survival is completely dependent on the person whose body it’s inhabiting. That person is fully autonomous and must consent to their body being used and occupied by the fetus.

I know this is repetitive, but it seems to need repeating: There is no human right granted to anyone to use any part of another human’s body, living or dead, for their survival. If you’re in need of an organ transplant, and someone has just died with the organ you need, that doesn’t grant you the right to take what you need from them unless they consented to it before their death. You don’t have the right to take their completely viable organs that they are no longer using if that person did not sign up to be a donor, and it doesn’t matter if you will die as a result. If I’ve been stabbed and am bleeding out, and will die unless given a blood transfusion, no one can be legally compelled to give me their blood to save my life. Not even my own mother. Not even if she was the one who stabbed me in the first place.

If no one has the right to a dead person’s organs or their mother’s blood, what right does a fetus have to another person’s entire body?

“You shouldn’t get to kill a baby just because you’re too lazy to use contraception!”

Please, tell me which form of contraception is 100% effective 100% of the time. Even a minuscule failure rate (based on perfect use) means that unintended conception will occur. I have personally met several people who conceived/were conceived themselves despite multiple forms of contraception being used. It happens. If someone uses two or three methods in tandem, I think they’re making it pretty clear that they do NOT wish to conceive, don’t you? And sure, some do decide to continue with the pregnancy (I think the best reaction I ever heard along these lines was “I need to meet the person who could get past all that!). Again, that’s their choice.

Yes, some people conceive because they neglected to use contraception, for whatever reason. Those reasons are no one’s business but their own. Having unsafe sex is not a crime and isn’t something people need to be punished for. More on that coming up in the next point.

“Abstinence is 100% effective! You made the choice to have sex, deal with the consequences!”

Electing to have an abortion is one way to deal with the consequences. It’s just one that some find immoral, or icky, or selfish. Thankfully, morals are subjective, and it isn’t a crime to be selfish or icky. Even if it were, using forced pregnancy (which the UN defines as a form of torture) as a punishment is unconscionable and inhumane.

Also, what do you suggest for childfree couples? Believe it or not, there are people in long-term, committed, loving, healthy relationships who don’t wish to have children. Should they be condemned to lifelong abstinence because there’s a chance they might conceive? Have fun trying to sell that one.

Consent to sex does not equal consent to pregnancy. Now, imagine that it wasn’t consensual to begin with. (This is where they like to bring up the statistic of abortions as a result of rape, because they live in a world where every instance of sexual assault is reported, and every victim discloses how they came to be pregnant.)

We don’t deny medical care to those who develop lung cancer due to their 20-year pack-a-day habit, or those who drink themselves into liver failure. If a drunk driver causes a collision, we don’t stand by and let them die from their injuries, even if the collision caused the death of others. But somehow, there are those who think a person with a uterus should literally be tortured and have their human rights revoked if a fetus is inhabiting that uterus. That is terrifying.

“What about the father? The fetus is 50% his so he should have a say!”

It may be 50% his genetic material, but it is 100% inhabiting another person’s body, which is why that person gets to make the final call.

Let’s break down what’s being implied here: If a couple conceives and the pregnant person wants to abort, they should obtain permission from their partner in order to do so. If he disagrees, they should respect that and carry the pregnancy to term. That doesn’t seem very 50-50 anymore, does it? I think it’s funny that this argument only seems to work under the assumption that the father would want to continue with the pregnancy. If he felt it would be best to terminate and his partner disagreed, would they still argue that his vote somehow carries more weight? I doubt it.

“You shouldn’t have an abortion just because pregnancy is inconvenient!”

“Inconvenient?!” Dude. A hangnail is inconvenient. Missing a parcel delivery and having to go to the post office is inconvenient. Your cat’s preference for hacking up hairballs on your clean laundry instead of the tile floor is inconvenient. To call pregnancy “inconvenient” is absurd in the extreme. Pregnancy, even under the best conditions, permanently alters a person’s body. I dare you to tell someone who has been through pregnancy and labour that it was merely “inconvenient.” Seriously, look up third-and-fourth degree tears, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, abdominal separation, etc. just for starters, and then tell me it’s just inconvenient.

“Post-abortive women suffer from depression and mental illness!”

Find me an unbiased source to back that up, please. It simply isn’t true, the majority of people who have undergone an abortion report feeling relieved. Also, what kind of an effect do you imagine forcing an unwanted pregnancy and birth on an unwilling person has on their mental health? Hell, wanted pregnancies can take a huge toll on a person’s mental health, but I don’t see anyone using postpartum depression to argue against pregnancy, childbirth and parenthood.

“Doctors don’t know everything! I knew someone whose doctor said their pregnancy was unviable and they should terminate, but they didn’t and now they have a beautiful, perfect child!”

Cool story. I’m glad this person was able to make that choice for themselves and that things turned out okay. I’m still gonna trust the advice of someone who invested their time and money into getting a medical degree over the anecdote of an internet stranger, but that’s me.

“Infertile couples would be so happy to have your baby! Just give it up for adoption!”

I don’t know if you’re aware, but there is no shortage of children in need of families. There is, however, a shortage of people willing to adopt older children, or non-white babies/children, children and babies who are born addicted, HIV+, severely disabled/medically fragile... I could go on.

Getting back to the “Doctors don’t know everything!” point, it may be worth noting that I used to work in a foster home with severely disabled children. It was by far the hardest, most heartbreaking and exhausting job I’ve ever had. I have seen firsthand what these kids go through, how much around-the-clock care they require, how forgotten some of them are by their families, and how they are considered “undesirable” as far as adoption goes. I have seen how they suffer. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it would have been better for any of them if they hadn’t been born, but I fully understand if someone is simply not up to the task of devoting their life to caring for a child who will be completely dependent on them for everything for however long they live, which sadly isn’t long for many of them. I’m glad I did it, but not everyone can, and there is nothing wrong with admitting that.

All of that aside, adoption is only an alternative to parenthood, not pregnancy. No one owes you the use of their uterus to house a fetus you want just because you’re unable to make your own.

This is already longer than I originally intended, but I think I’ve covered the most commonly recycled arguments. The rest mainly boil down to “Abortion goes against my personal theological/philosophical beliefs or moral code!” and all I can say in response to that is that I’m so glad I don’t have to live by anyone’s concept of morality and am allowed my own. It’s pretty great.

I won’t be complacent, however. I have never been more terrified in my life as a uterus-bearing person as I am right now, and I know I’m not alone in that. We cannot allow our rights to be revoked. We cannot afford to lose the ground those before us fought so hard to gain. I will do all I can to keep that from happening.

If the right to our bodies isn’t worth fighting for, I don’t know what is.

#abortion #pro choice

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beholdingavatar · 5 years

Text

But I’m Afraid You Absolutely Did Choose It

A Rumination on Fear, The Magnus Archives, and the Modern Queer Experience

***

Given the source material on which this draws, there is only one way this piece can open.

Statement begins.

I first listened to The Magnus Archives on the recommendation of the King Falls AM discord server. I’m hardly a horror fan - most horror movies make me want to throw up and then give me weeks worth of lasting nightmares - but the KFAM discord has yet to steer me wrong, so I took a chance. It was - so utterly worth it.

The Magnus Archives is a serial fiction podcast, centering around an institute for paranormal research, and particularly the archives. The series begins with the appointment of Jon Sims as the new head archivist after the brutal murder of his predecessor, Gertrude, and follows - at least for the first season - his attempts to digitize the archive. I suggest you read no further if you are interested and want to avoid spoilers, because the conceit of this piece concerns spoilers from season 2 onward.

The universe in which The Magnus Archives (hereafter TMA) operates is affected by eldritch fear entities, each with their own acolytes and servants, their own rituals to try and enter our world and rule it. I’m no stranger to fear. How could I be, with the world as it is? I’m queer, I’m autistic, I have non-citizen immigrant parents, I’m mixed race - that’s a veritable laundry list, in this day and age. And that’s without tagging on the healthy paranoia that’s developed as a result of years of having every authority figure, every person I considered a friend, pull the rug out from under me at some point or another. Usually, between the fear and the paranoia, the idea of using horror as an escape seems laughable. But there’s something about TMA that makes it different.

Maybe it’s the low, soothing, audiobook voice that Jon reads the statements in. Maybe it’s the fact that the theme music is so good. Maybe it’s relating to archival assistant Martin and his glaringly obvious crush on his boss, Jon. Maybe it’s Basira and Daisy. Maybe it is a lot of things. But the first season of TMA kept me listening, kept me waiting with bated breath for the final line of every episode, when Jon would reveal the creepiest shit to us as listeners. And after the meta plot reveal, the speed with which I listened almost doubled.

There are the fourteen fear entities in the TMA universe. Some of them are fundamentally terrifying to me, like The Buried (the fear of being buried alive, of being trapped), or The Flesh (which is almost exactly what it sounds like, and I will never forgive Jonny Sims and Alex Newall for imprinting in my brain the Foleys for a flesh pit). Some pose interesting frames through which to view myself - as someone perpetually othered due to being autistic, there’s something delightfully empowering about The Stranger (the fear of the outsider, the unknown, what doesn’t belong). Jon, Martin, Basira, Daisy, and Melanie, our core cast, work for another, The Beholding, which is far and away in my mind the most interesting of them all.

The Beholding is the Fear of being known. Not of having someone know of your general existence, but rather the fear of being utterly known, of having some other being know every inch of you, know your innermost thoughts and innermost fears, the things you would never say to anyone. I am utterly fascinated by the Beholding, for a number of reasons. The first is that I want Jon Sims’ job. I could write you a whole other essay on why I would make a fantastic Archivist, but that is not where I want to go here. No - I want to talk about the concept of Being Known.

I’m someone who doesn’t fit into the norm by any stretch of the imagination, due to a variety of parts of myself that I cannot change, all of which have neat little labels. The only problem with this is that as soon as I tell someone one of those labels, they feel entitled to all that there is of me associated with that label. The best example of this, for me, is being queer.

I’m a lesbian, technically. I’ve just never been overly fond of the term, for a whole variety of reasons, ranging from its use as a slur directed at me during my childhood, to some very complex family history I’d really rather not get into in an essay I’m going to put online eventually. Given this lack of fondness towards the term “lesbian”, I’ve gravitated towards other labels, and I’ve settled - after not very long, to be perfectly honest - on queer. Maybe that’s because I grew up around queer historians, who were rather formative, but that’s beside the point. I chose queer, the queer of “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, and of “queer anger is queer power”, and of “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you” because that was the person I knew myself to be.

Now, when I say I’m queer, its like whoever I’ve told feels like they can ask whatever question they want regarding my life and my identity, purely due to my use of the word. That’s not how it works. Or rather, that shouldn’t be how it works. What I have instead is the perpetual decision to make. Do I want to come out to this person? Can I deal with the questions right now? Are they the kind of person who I won’t mind knowing all of that? Maybe this is why The Beholding is so interesting to me on some level. Of all the Fears, it is the one I feel I contend with the most, the one that holds the most danger for me as a queer person.

The Fears exist as manifestations of common phobias - Jonny Sims, the creator and writer of TMA (not to be confused with the character he voices, Jon Sims, the Archivist), has confirmed as much in his season Q+As. But in seeing their presence in the world of TMA, seeing the ways that they affect those who interact with them - there’s a bizarre sense of comfort in it. Yes, says every statement Jon reads, there is a plausible reason for it all. They are swept up in the Knowing, in the Othering, there is something hovering that makes all the things you fear utterly legitimate, regardless of whatever else you might hear said. You are allowed to be afraid, there is reason, and there is reason that others will ignore, will overlook, but your fear? Your fear is valid. And, says everything that ever goes wrong in a TMA episode, more importantly, you are right to be afraid.

We, as queer people, so often end up being the keepers of the horror. We are left to remember our dead. We are left to fight battles everyone else has declared won. We are stuck in the trenches while the fronts move, trying to maintain a line without support. We scream until we are hoarse because we know from experience that “silence” is a word for gravestones, a word that leads to gravestones. We hold within our community memory, just now recouping the losses that are the consequences of silence by those in power, all the horrors that we have suffered, because no one else wants to remember them. We, as a community, Know.

So The Beholding is ours, twice over. We Know things otherwise forgotten, in the way of the avatars of the Fear, like Jon, and we are Known, and we fear that happening in ways that we cannot control. And if The Beholding is ours, then we also belong to it. We belong to The Beholding in the same way that the archival staff do. And if that is true, then it chose us.

There is something glorious about the inexorability of joining the service of a Fear, for the sake of this extended metaphor that is really just me screaming into the void about the brilliance of Jonny Sims and my love for TMA. The Fear chooses you, and you are marked by it and bound by it. We have been marked by the fear of Knowing and of Being Known for as long as we have known who we are. It is the fear that we carry with us at all times. It has marked us. It is the Fear that drove me back into the closet for my time at high school in Virginia. It is the Fear that makes me scared for the lives of those I love. It is the Fear informed by the Knowing, by the statistics we see about suicides, about murders, about homelessness, about illness. It is our fear, as a community, as queer people in this modern world. We are afraid of the history we carry, of being silent, of not being heard, of being known too much in the wrong places, by the wrong people, at the wrong time.

I have a pair of earrings that are eyes - the symbol of The Beholding. I was gifted them long before I started listening to TMA, but now they have taken on a new meaning. I put them on any time I know I will have a tough day. I put them on when getting out of bed is a struggle. I put them on, because they belong to The Beholding, and I like to think of The Beholding as mine, as ours.

And if I’m wearing something of The Beholding, maybe it will listen to me. Maybe it will send my story on. Maybe someday, an Archivist will sit down with a tape recorder and commit this to magnetic tape, so that I am never completely silent, so that I can be Known in a way that I can control.

Statement ends.

#The Magnus Archives #TMA #this is - long - and also kinda deep #and very philosophical #but I had to write it somewhere #and I'm just gonna yell it into this void

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mistressarafax · 5 years

Text

Small Adjustments

Kaiba didn’t adjust to change well. It didn’t happen often, and usually, any changes in his life were directly the result of Mokuba forcing change into his life.

The biggest change he’d lived through was Mokuba leaving for college. It was the first time they’d ever been separated for more than a week or two, and it forced Kaiba to accept that his little brother had grown up. Forced him to find a routine that didn’t involve Mokuba in the manor. It had been lonely and difficult, but it's what his brother wanted.

Mokuba came back after a year at school taller than Kaiba, which had honestly been a shock. Of course, he’d watched Mokuba grow up over the years, hitting growth spurts along the way and slowly but surely catching up to his older brother’s height. Now the soon-to-be nineteen-year-old stood an inch taller than him.

Not only was he taller, but he’d clearly spent a significant portion of time on campus working out. His muscles had filled out, and while his face still had some of its boyish features, he looked more like an adult than a child. It was difficult for him to adjust to the fact that his little brother wasn’t little anymore.

Over the summer, Mokuba worked short hours at KaibaCorp. He spent a week in all of the departments, doing all kinds of work and trying out every kind of job imaginable.

“You know there’s a vice president position for you,” Kaiba said. “You don’t have to do the small stuff.”

Mokuba had met his comment with a glare. “I want to have a full picture of the company, Seto. Most people don’t just get put into a top position. They work for it and move their way up.”

“I worked for it.” It felt like an accusation, words that had been directed at him at a far more impressionable time in his life coming back to bite him again only from someone who actually mattered.

Mokuba’s expression and tone softened. “I didn’t mean that to insult you. Yes, you worked for it. And you work to keep it every single day. You seized the company from Gozaburo, and the world is better for it. What I’m saying is that I don’t deserve to be the vice president just because I’m your brother. I don’t want valid accusations of nepotism to hang over my head. I want to earn it.”

It was another adjustment, something he’d never expected. He always imagined that Mokuba would just become his vice president, but a part of him was proud of Mokuba for wanting to stand on his own. To work for his own achievements. That change didn’t take him long to accept.

Two weeks later, Mokuba marched into his study and sat back on the leather couch. He’d pulled out his phone and typed out a message, distractedly announcing, “I’m not going to go back to school in the fall.”

“Why not?”

“I’d rather attend online classes from home. Plus, I can spend a few hours a week helping out at work.”

Which suited Kaiba just fine.

What didn’t suit Kaiba just fine was that now that Mokuba was home and all of his school friends had headed back to college for the fall, Mokuba started hanging out with the only loser who’d stuck around Domino City, Joey Wheeler. He’d discovered the fact quite by accident when he found the idiot in Mokuba’s entertainment room, holding a bag of potato chips and chewing with his mouth open.

“Who let you in here, Wheeler?”

“That would be your brother.” He’d grabbed another handful of chips, casually leaning back onto the couch as though it were perfectly normal for him to be here. As if there wasn’t a point in time when the two of them couldn’t be in the same room without fighting.

Kaiba opened his mouth to tell him off when Mokuba walked back in the room. “Hey, Seto!” he greeted. “Hopefully you two were playing nice.”

“Nice enough,” Wheeler answered with a shrug.

Kaiba didn’t deign him with a response before heading off to his study to get some more work done for the night.

The one night became several nights, and within a few months, it became almost surprising to not see Wheeler at the manor, sitting on the floor in front of Mokuba or next to him on the couch. After six months, Wheeler had become a permanent resident in the guest room closest to Mokuba’s. The two had become friends, the closest Kaiba had ever seen his brother have. Kaiba did not appreciate having to spend so much time around the irksome blonde, but he was willing to overlook it for Mokuba’s sake.

The friendship altered Kaiba’s life in unexpected ways. Mokuba and Wheeler frequently went out for dinner, leaving Kaiba on his own for meals. He also no longer felt guilty on nights he had to work late though. He knew Mokuba wasn’t alone, which offered him a great deal of relief.

After a year, Wheeler had become a constant presence in Kaiba’s life. Which was why he was so puzzled when he came home one night, expecting to see Mokuba and Wheeler playing video games like always, only to find Mokuba lying in bed, curled up with his back facing the door.

“Where’s Wheeler?” Kaiba asked, confused.

Even in the dim lighting, Kaiba could see how Mokuba’s back had tensed. “Home.” The response was short and uncomfortable, and Kaiba wondered what had happened. Clearly, Mokuba was upset. If the idiot had hurt his brother, Kaiba would rain fiery vengeance upon him. Mokuba hiccuped, fighting back tears.”God, I’m an idiot.”

That’s it, Kaiba decided. Wheeler’s dead.

Mokuba climbed out of bed and trudged over to Kaiba and embraced him. Something about him in that moment made him look small again. Defeated and tired and young. “Mokuba, what’s wrong?”

“I’m a fucking idiot.”

Kaiba frowned. “You are absolutely not an idiot.”

“It sure feels like it.”

“What happened?”

Mokuba stepped away from Seto, leveling a calculating gaze at his brother. “I… I kissed Joey.”

“You…? What?” Kaiba asked, trying to wrap his head around what Mokuba had just told him.

“I um… I like him. A lot. And I thought he liked me, too. So we were just playing games, like always, and curled up together on the couch, and I couldn't help myself and kissed him on the cheek. He left after that, and on God, Seto, I messed everything up.”

It was a lot to process at once. His brother liked a boy. Nothing wrong with that, he just found it unexpected. Maybe if they'd ever actually talked about the subject of romantic interests, Kaiba would have known this before now, but Kaiba really didn't care. What he found decidedly more wrong was that the boy he liked was Joseph Wheeler. He could make a whole list of issues he had with that.

But Mokuba liked Wheeler, and Kaiba doubted an extensive list of reasons why it was a terrible idea would persuade his brother to rethink. In fact, if Mokuba's teenage years had taught Kaiba anything, it was that trying to dissuade Mokuba from something only made him more likely to do it out of defiance. So Kaiba had to accept that Mokuba liked Wheeler, and that was that. There would be no changing that fact. Mokuba really liked him. Enough that being rejected had him clinging to Kaiba like he was still a kid again.

Kaiba hated seeing Mokuba so upset and defaulted to feeling angry at the source of that sadness. Wheeler was an absolute idiot for turning down Mokuba, and Kaiba was going to make him regret it. No one hurt his little brother without facing consequences.

“I shouldn't have told you that,” Mokuba finally said, shaking Kaiba from his thoughts.

“Why?” He was genuinely perplexed.

“Because you don't care. And you're probably mad.”

“Hell yes, I'm mad. Wheeler's going to pay for this.”

Mokuba looked at him seriously, pain still lingering in his expression. After a long moment, he sighed. “Don't do anything to him, Seto.”

“He needs to pay for hurting you. Like everyone else.”

“Seto...this isn't his fault. This is my fault. I can handle this without your interference.”

But as Mokuba bid him goodnight, and Seto headed to bed, he knew he would still involve himself. He couldn't not. It was far too common for people to hurt him through Mokuba. He doubted this was intentional on Wheeler's part, but he still couldn't let it slide.

Which is how he found himself at Wheeler's apartment first thing in the morning. Mokuba's happiness was far more important than the 9:30 AM upper management meeting he was missing to be here. It took Wheeler a few minutes to get to the door, and when he finally pulled it open, he looked rough. His hair fell into his face, still wet from a shower, dark circles under his eyes, and his face swollen, and Kaiba decided that maybe Wheeler was suffering over this too, just like Mokuba.

Wheeler sighed. “What do ya want, Kaiba?” he asked, sounding resigned.

“I'm here to see why you rejected my brother.”

Wheeler’s eyes flicked up to meet his, surprised. “I… I didn't.”

“Then why was he in his room, alone, crying over you last night?”

“I panicked last night, okay? He kissed me, and ain't like I didn't want it, but it felt wrong.”

“Why?”

Wheeler ran his hand through his hair, roughly raking through knots in frustration. “Because of people thinkin’ I'm too old for him. Because of what you'd think, too.”

Kaiba crossed his arms. “What, pray tell, do I think?”

Wheeler shrugged. “Dunno. That I ain't good enough for ‘im.”

“You're right. You aren't. Especially if you're going to worry about what others think of you over my brother's feelings for you.”

“Wait so... you ain't against it?”

Kaiba grumbled, searching for the right words. “I'll never be against something, someone, that makes Mokuba happy. Even if you aren't good enough for him.”

“Really?” Wheeler's eyes flickered with hope and excitement.

Kaiba rolled his eyes and turned around, ready to leave. Wheeler laughed from behind him. “Thanks, Kaiba!” he shouted from the doorway. Kaiba didn't respond, but he knew he'd have an easier time adjusting to them dating than adjusting to both a moping, heartbroken Mokuba and the sudden lack of Wheeler's presence in his life. A laughable thought but true nonetheless.

He headed into work after that, staying extra focused since he's arrived late. He even worked late to make up for the lost time. He arrived home wau after the sun had set and promptly went to the media room, hoping to find Mokuba and Wheeler both there.

The glow of the screen reassured him as he drew near. He stepped into the doorway and frowned at the sight before him. Mokuba rested his weight on top of Wheeler, their game abandoned in favor of locking lips.

Without calling any attention to himself, he crept away, leaving them to their activities. The idea of them dating still felt foreign and weird, but it was a change he could live with.

#riskshipping #or as i've decided to call it... mojo #joey wheeler #mokuba kaiba #seto kaiba

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life-experiences-by-me · 5 years

Text

Time-Outs and How They Might Accidentally Fuck Up Our Kids

I feel I should start this by mentioning that I don’t have any children of my own. However, I do have parents, I have been a child, and I have an abusive ex-boyfriend (whose relevance to this topic will be made clear later). So! Seeing a lot of debate lately around the topic of time-outs and other punishments parents inflict on their children, I thought I would share my two cents by writing about my own experience in this area.

Today I saw a pin on Pinterest about a “Time-Out Bottle” (pictured below). The idea of the bottle is you fill it with water, glitter glue, and glitter, put your kid in time-out, shake it, and their punishment is over when all the glitter has settled at the bottom. The bottle also has a poem on it containing the phrase “You’re in time-out/Because you were acting rotten”. Personally, I thought the idea of the bottle, watching the glitter sink (such a calming movement) was an interesting idea, though I’d have left off the poem and called it something less punishment-y. The comments section on this pin was full of people discussing (some rather heatedly) the use of the word “rotten” in the poem, and the effectiveness of time-outs as a whole. While I expected unpleasantness, I was shocked at some of the comments I read. The worst example I saw was one person who stated to those who thought the poem was too negative, “This is unfortunately why kids these days can’t take how cruel other people can be in the real world, and end up killing themselves over being bullied.” Ummm, WHAT? I couldn’t believe what I was reading! Suddenly wanting to raise your children in a positive environment is increasing their susceptibility to suicide? I know that these kinds of debates bring out the extremists, but holy crow! And so it was that I started to think back to my own childhood, and how my parents raised me.

Now, my parents never put me in time-out. I was grounded from seeing my friends one time for one weekend, after breaking curfew by a good hour, having been warned about it before. And they never hit me. What was the result of this “soft, over protective” parenting? Once I understood my reactions to my emotions, I had one major (though short, like five seconds tops) public outburst at the mall, which I realizied immediately after the fact was wrong with no prompting or punishment from my parents. I apologized once I had some time to calm down, and they accepted. I never did anything like that again. I was not, and still am not, disrespectful to anyone unless they earn it. I was and am kind. I was and am responsible. I understand my emotions and can control my reactions to them for the most part. I have a positive relationship with my parents. However, while my parents never tried to put me in time-out, there was one person who did: my psycho ex-boyfriend.

My ex was very abusive to me emotionally during our entire relationship, but I never knew how bad it was until I left him. We met and started dating when I was 21, and I was 23 when this particular experience occurred. Keep that in mind: Twenty. Three. I was a grown woman, I had been an adult for 5 full years at this point. He was older than me, by almost a decade, in his thirties. And we fought all the time. Mostly because I - being a grown-ass woman - know myself and my mind, and he - being older - thought he knew better than me in all things, including me and my emotions. One day, while at his place, we were having a fight because I hadn’t obeyed him fast enough (he wanted me to come watch him practice something, I was finishing up writing something and wanted to get my thoughts down before I forgot them), and he said we were going to try something different. He said that from now on whenever I was being “a brat”, he was going to put me in time-out: he was going to take my phone, and I had to sit in a chair in the corner of his bedroom facing the wall and I wasn’t allowed to get up, look at him, or talk to him for five minutes. I was HORRIFIED. I hated the idea of being forced to be isolated, it actually terrified me. Who would do that to a person? I told him I absolutely would not do that, I threatened to leave and go home. He then said, “Well, I have to have some way to punish you when you’re wrong.” Punish me. PUNISH me. We were ADULTS, I was TWENTY-THREE YEARS OLD, and this man wanted to PUNISH ME for doing things that HE thought were inappropriate or disrespectful to him (whether they were meant that way or not). The very idea of this, I’m sure you’ll agree, is laughable. But while I can laugh about it now, at the time, I didn’t find this funny - I found it hurtful, and confusing. Why did he need to punish me? He loved me, and I loved him, why would he want to hurt me like that? What did I do so wrong that he felt like he had to punish me? The answers, of course, are: he didn't; he's an asshole who didn't really love me; and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. And looking back on my relationship with him, while there was a red flag here and there, THIS was the moment I finally realized who he was. THIS was the moment I understood the manipulative and controlling person I was willingly staying with (and sadly continued to stay with, even after this, for another two years). THIS was the moment that lead to me, finally, getting the hell away from him.

Now, there are a couple of things that I think about, remembering this experience. Firstly, I can’t help but wonder if my reaction to my crazy ex’s “punishment” would have been different if my parents had put me in that position regularly as a child. And if so, how? But secondly, and far more importantly, if I, a full grown adult woman approaching her mid-twenties, had that kind of reaction to the IDEA of being put in “time-out”.. what is happing with the children whose parents are actually going through with it, over and over? Children who are still trying to understand their emotions, and their reactions to them? Children who are still trying to understand where they fit in this world they didn’t ask to be brought into? Children who, half the time, aren’t even told WHY they’re being punished to begin with? I know that the idea behind time-outs and other punishment for children is for parents to teach them. They want their kids to understand how the world works. But ask yourself: is that really how the world works? If you’re a parent, and your father came to you today and tried to put you in time-out for not eating all your vegetables, would you think “oh well, that’s just how the world works”, or would you laugh at them for even suggesting it? If you’re at the supermarket and your mother told you to put back the dessert you picked up, and then tried to spank you when you told her no, would you think “just how the world works”, or would you freak out at being assaulted in public? If your parents come over to visit and the living room is a mess, do you expect to be grounded for not cleaning up after yourself? Is that not what the punishments of your childhood taught you to expect?

Now, I know that actions have consequences. And I know children need to be taught that. But here’s the thing: children are PEOPLE. Young people, people who still need looking after, but people nonetheless. And if you wouldn’t inflict these types of punishments on other people, why on earth would you make a child suffer through them? You’d be surprised how good children can get at having a conversation if you just give them the tools and the opportunity. Children don’t understand these emotions that are so big for their still developing minds - help them. Talk to them about how to recognize when an emotion is getting the better of them, and methods they can use to get control of themselves again. Talk to them about when it IS okay to show someone how they’re feeling, even if it’s a “bad” feeling, and how to do it respectfully and still stay true to themselves. A child who knows their emotions will have an easier time controlling their reactions, and explaining how they feel. And a child who isn’t afraid of being punished for their feelings, and their reactions to them, will have an easier time talking to their parents about it.

That’s my life experience, anyway.

#child care #child punishment #time-out #tw: suicide mention #tw: emotional abuse #a life experience by me #yes it’s the ex

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rjzimmerman · 5 years

Link

This post is going to be long, and I hope you’ll bear with me. The link leads you to an essay recently published in The New York Magazine - Intelligencer, written by David Wallace-Wells. I just finished reading the essay. The essay is an excerpt from a book by David Wallace-Wells entitled, “The Uninhabitable Earth - Life After Warming.” Here’s the cover of the book: bland. If you judge a book by its cover and conclude that the book has to be as bland as the cover, you will be very wrong.

Now, go back with me a few months. Back in 2017, The New York Magazine published an essay from David Wallace-Wells that was entitled, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” which essay is included in his new book. I posted a link to that essay, and here’s the link to my post. This essay created a firestorm in the climate change community, with most people criticizing the author/writer for unnecessarily scaring the shit out of people. I wrote a response to those who criticized the author/writer, and here’s the link to that response. My response included potty language, which I tend to use when I need to use a 2x4 to wake up the meek. An excerpt from my post, with some potty language:

From my perspective, this essay is absolutely necessary. We need more people to understand the brutality of the world that will emerge if we don’t control our need for more and better things and a big, cozy house with perfectly controlled indoor environments and cars that will go fast while we’re taking our family to the shore or the mountains or to grandma’s house, sucking up lots of gasoline to get us there.

And you know what? To the scientists who think this essay goes too far: you are dead ass wrong. Being gentle and using nice words and phrases and convincing ourselves that a few LED light bulbs will do the trick is so ineffective it’s beyond laughable. We need to take the closest 2x4, and smack the side of the head of every fucking politician in DC and in our state capitals and in our city halls and inform that we intend to live long, healthy lives, and that we expect our children and grandchildren to do the same. We don’t want to be remembered as the generations that killed off thousands of species of living things and jeopardized our own survival. And if scaring the shit out of people is what it takes to get us there, amen. Being ladies and gentlemen has not worked, and will not work, so long as these politicians are more interested in continuing the status quo so their reelection campaign war chests can get bigger and bigger. We need to understand that the consequences of inaction are beyond our limited capacity to imagine them.

When I posted the link to the original essay, I included an excerpt from it, which I’m repeating now:

What follows is not a series of predictions of what will happen — that will be determined in large part by the much-less-certain science of human response. Instead, it is a portrait of our best understanding of where the planet is heading absent aggressive action. It is unlikely that all of these warming scenarios will be fully realized, largely because the devastation along the way will shake our complacency. But those scenarios, and not the present climate, are the baseline. In fact, they are our schedule.

But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough. Over the past decades, our culture has gone apocalyptic with zombie movies and Mad Max dystopias, perhaps the collective result of displaced climate anxiety, and yet when it comes to contemplating real-world warming dangers, we suffer from an incredible failure of imagination. The reasons for that are many: the timid language of scientific probabilities, which the climatologist James Hansen once called “scientific reticence” in a paper chastising scientists for editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to communicate how dire the threat really was; the fact that the country is dominated by a group of technocrats who believe any problem can be solved and an opposing culture that doesn’t even see warming as a problem worth addressing; the way that climate denialism has made scientists even more cautious in offering speculative warnings; the simple speed of change and, also, its slowness, such that we are only seeing effects now of warming from decades past; our uncertainty about uncertainty, which the climate writer Naomi Oreskes in particular has suggested stops us from preparing as though anything worse than a median outcome were even possible; the way we assume climate change will hit hardest elsewhere, not everywhere; the smallness (two degrees) and largeness (1.8 trillion tons) and abstractness (400 parts per million) of the numbers; the discomfort of considering a problem that is very difficult, if not impossible, to solve; the altogether incomprehensible scale of that problem, which amounts to the prospect of our own annihilation; simple fear. But aversion arising from fear is a form of denial, too.

Now, how about this essay about “cautious optimism?” I don’t feel optimism, at all. David Wallace-Wells tells us about all the technology that exists that can theoretically yank CO2 out of the atmosphere, or block the warming rays of the sun, or capture and bury carbon, but that the scale necessary to implement these technologies globally will require decades and trillions of dollars, let alone the political will to spend the time and the money. So, we’re back to ground zero....we have to reduce emissions. Period. But, an excerpt anyway:

No single solution alone is sufficient, but the solutions, plural, are here already. As climate activists often say, we have, today, all the tools we need to avoid catastrophic change. It’s true: a carbon tax and government action to aggressively phase out dirty energy, even outright ban much of it; a new approach to agricultural practices and a shift away from beef and dairy in global diet; and public investment in green energy and carbon capture. We just need to choose to implement them — all of them — and quite fast. But of course political will is not some trivial ingredient always at hand. We probably have the tools we need to solve global poverty, epidemic disease, and the abuse of women, as well.

That the solutions are obvious, and available, does not mean the problem is anything but overwhelming. We may never be quite able to hold in our heads the full scope of climate change, never be quite able to see it all fully, and if global warming continues on anything like its present track, it will come to shape everything we do on the planet, from agriculture to human migration to business and mental health, transforming not just our relationship to nature but to politics and to history, and will prove to be a knowledge system as total as “modernity.”

#climate change #environment #green new deal #life after warming #the uninhabitable earth #David Wallace-Wells #climate adaptation

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